The Fire of a Purpose

Abstract

What comes to mind when you think of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan Macy? Popular conception of the deafblind Keller and Sullivan, who was her teacher, interpreter, and friend, often ends at the same point where most of the hagiographic portrayals of them fade to black: the moment at the water pump when the young Keller recognized the shapes pressed into her hand by Sullivan as language. However, this was only the beginning of a lifelong relationship full of contradictions which my novel, The Fire of a Purpose, seeks to explore. Over the years, intimacy and distance grew between the two women. Keller depended on Sullivan to communicate with the world and to understand her dissonant speaking voice (a lifelong source of anguish), but the headstrong and traumatized Sullivan also depended on Keller’s optimism and widely-celebrated resilience. Sullivan defied contemporary conception of disability in her uncompromising advocacy for Keller’s dreams of education and of speaking aloud, but Sullivan’s writings reveal a worldview that conflated physical limitations with limitation on humanity. Her views were not changed by her own disability—partial blindness which was initially ameliorated by multiple painful operations and progressed to complete lack of sight later in life, worsened by eyestrain from reading to Keller. Their relationship was also complicated by their different backgrounds, Sullivan’s emotional challenges, Keller’s radical politics and (the centerpiece of this excerpt) Keller’s thwarted engagement. This thesis consists of two parts: a critical essay exploring how three novels approach the challenge of characterizing real, historical individuals and an opening excerpt of the novel described above, titled after a line in Sullivan’s unpublished memoir.