ABSTRACT

Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan, remain two of the best-known American women. But few people know how Sullivan came to her role as teacher of the deaf and blind Keller. Contrasting their lives with Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, the era's prominent abolitionist, this book sheds light on the gender and disability expectations that affected the public perception of Sullivan and Keller. This book provides a fascinating insight into class, ethnicity, gender, and disability issues in the Gilded Age and Progressive-Era America.

chapter |10 pages

Introduction

chapter |6 pages

Sanborn's Younger Days, 1831–1865

chapter 1|14 pages

The Post–Civil War North

Triumphant for Some

chapter 3|16 pages

Yankee Administrators and Irish Populism

chapter 4|21 pages

Keller and Sullivan

World Fame and Local Hostility, 1887–1892

chapter 6|18 pages

Progressivism and Radicalism in the 1910s