Take a close look at this photo and its subjects: the little girl with the doll, and a young woman. Their high-necked, ruffled clothing indicates that this probably comes from the late 19th century, which, without something else intrinsically interesting, would make this picture only of antiquarian rather than historical interest. Sure, you’d expect this from the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston, which turned up this gem and announced it last week.
But examine this more closely as you take an imaginative leap across more than a century. The woman – judging from the unlined face and trim body, probably no older than her early 20s—gazes slightly away from the camera—you can’t tell if she’s looking directly at her charge or at another point off in the distance. Or maybe her eyes are bothered by the camera flash so much that involuntarily, she’s forced to look away.
And yet, despite everything, she keeps those eyes open, the way a realist does—the way you would, too, if you had endured the loss of a mother to tuberculosis, abandonment by an abusive, alcoholic father, or one painful eye operation after another.
With her simple white dress with the brooch at the neck, she appears indistinguishable from hundreds of thousands of other young women of Irish descent. Who’d ever think that the actress who achieved immortality as sexy Mrs. Robinson would win an Academy Award for playing her?
Those pensive eyes maybe ponder the secrets of the child, thinking that taking her outside on a day like today, where she can soak up the atmosphere and play with others her age, might help.
The firm lips hint not just at the sense of resolution that any adult needs in dealing with a youngster, but also the iron will not to yield in the face of difficulties that would daunt anyone—particularly outbursts so prolonged and terrible that as a last resort to putting this girl away, her parents have written in desperation from all the way down in Alabama up to Boston, pleading for someone knowledgeable enough to break through to their daughter.
And there is the young girl, sitting straight up in her high-backed porch chair, far more inscrutable than her teacher because she’s turned sideways, not focused on anything at all—and, with her eyes almost closed, perhaps completely unable to do so. But even at the age of seven, in profile, she’s already showing signs of the beauty she could become as an adult—a beauty she might never be able to appreciate—and of dimensions so profound that Mark Twain would call her 10 years later “the most marvelous person of her sex that has existed on this earth since Joan of Arc.”
Above all she’s comforted, maybe even transported, to a realm only she, sightless and deaf as she is, can comprehend, as she cradles a doll with far more ornamentation in its dress than either the adult or the child. How did she get this doll? From her parents? Or maybe from this young woman, as a kind of welcoming gift, an expression of openness to someone who doesn’t invite it?
Did you notice the hands clasped together? They reveal much, too—of a bond forming between teacher and child, of care and concern, of ways of communicating beyond simply the fingerspelling in the palm that forms part of the sign language the girl might have to master to break out of her isolation.
By now, you can see that this picture doesn’t spill its secrets about time, place or even people. They have to be teased out as you imagine these two and their world, of what it must have taken to cross this threshold into something they could never anticipate—public astonishment in their time and even ours, and emotional complications in the journey of two people who achieved so much.
Well, you can read about them, not just in the news articles explaining this photo discovery, such as this one, but in substantial biographies like Joseph P. Lash’s Helen and Teacher. Then you can enter more fully—emotionally this time—into this picture of Helen Keller and her redoubtable teacher, Annie Sullivan, the “Miracle Worker” who proved how much of a difference one human being—a teacher, maybe even you—can make to others.
But examine this more closely as you take an imaginative leap across more than a century. The woman – judging from the unlined face and trim body, probably no older than her early 20s—gazes slightly away from the camera—you can’t tell if she’s looking directly at her charge or at another point off in the distance. Or maybe her eyes are bothered by the camera flash so much that involuntarily, she’s forced to look away.
And yet, despite everything, she keeps those eyes open, the way a realist does—the way you would, too, if you had endured the loss of a mother to tuberculosis, abandonment by an abusive, alcoholic father, or one painful eye operation after another.
With her simple white dress with the brooch at the neck, she appears indistinguishable from hundreds of thousands of other young women of Irish descent. Who’d ever think that the actress who achieved immortality as sexy Mrs. Robinson would win an Academy Award for playing her?
Those pensive eyes maybe ponder the secrets of the child, thinking that taking her outside on a day like today, where she can soak up the atmosphere and play with others her age, might help.
The firm lips hint not just at the sense of resolution that any adult needs in dealing with a youngster, but also the iron will not to yield in the face of difficulties that would daunt anyone—particularly outbursts so prolonged and terrible that as a last resort to putting this girl away, her parents have written in desperation from all the way down in Alabama up to Boston, pleading for someone knowledgeable enough to break through to their daughter.
And there is the young girl, sitting straight up in her high-backed porch chair, far more inscrutable than her teacher because she’s turned sideways, not focused on anything at all—and, with her eyes almost closed, perhaps completely unable to do so. But even at the age of seven, in profile, she’s already showing signs of the beauty she could become as an adult—a beauty she might never be able to appreciate—and of dimensions so profound that Mark Twain would call her 10 years later “the most marvelous person of her sex that has existed on this earth since Joan of Arc.”
Above all she’s comforted, maybe even transported, to a realm only she, sightless and deaf as she is, can comprehend, as she cradles a doll with far more ornamentation in its dress than either the adult or the child. How did she get this doll? From her parents? Or maybe from this young woman, as a kind of welcoming gift, an expression of openness to someone who doesn’t invite it?
Did you notice the hands clasped together? They reveal much, too—of a bond forming between teacher and child, of care and concern, of ways of communicating beyond simply the fingerspelling in the palm that forms part of the sign language the girl might have to master to break out of her isolation.
By now, you can see that this picture doesn’t spill its secrets about time, place or even people. They have to be teased out as you imagine these two and their world, of what it must have taken to cross this threshold into something they could never anticipate—public astonishment in their time and even ours, and emotional complications in the journey of two people who achieved so much.
Well, you can read about them, not just in the news articles explaining this photo discovery, such as this one, but in substantial biographies like Joseph P. Lash’s Helen and Teacher. Then you can enter more fully—emotionally this time—into this picture of Helen Keller and her redoubtable teacher, Annie Sullivan, the “Miracle Worker” who proved how much of a difference one human being—a teacher, maybe even you—can make to others.
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