The Story of My Life by Helen Keller Summary CBSE Class 10 English Literature
The Story of My Life – Helen Keller
About the Author
Helen Adam Keller was bom on June 27,1880. She was an American author, political activist and lecturer. Her father’s name was Arthur H. Keller. He was a captain, a former officer of the Confederate Army. Her mother was Kate Adams Keller. The Keller family originated from Switzerland. Helen contracted an illness when she was nineteen months old. It was an acute congestion of the stomach and brain which could have been scarlet fever or meningitis. She did not suffer long from this illness but it left her deaf and blind. Helen started communicating through signs with her family. In 1886, she was taken to Dr. J. Julian Chisolen who was an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist for advice who further sent them to Alexandar Graham Bell who was working with the deaf children at that time. Bell advised them to contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind. On reaching there, the school’s director put Helen under the charge of their former student Anne Sullivan who herself was visually impaired.
Anne Sullivan began to teach Helen to communicate by spelling words into her hands which Helen quickly leamt. In 1894, they both moved to New York to attend Wright-Humason School for the Deaf and Horace Mann School for the Deaf. In 1900, Helen gained admission in Radcliffe College. At the age of 24, in 1904, she graduated from the same college and became the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts Degree. Anne Sullivan stayed as a companion for 20 long years with Helen but after marriage her health started failing and Polly Thompson was hired to keep house.
Polly was a young woman from Scotland who had no experience with deaf or blind people but she became a constant companion to Keller. Anne died in 1936 and Helen moved to Connecticut with Polly. Both travelled worldwide and raised funding for the blind. Polly suffered a stroke and died in 1960. After her death Winnie Corbally remained Keller’s companion for the rest of her life.
Keller became a world famous speaker and author. She is still remembered as an advocate for people with disabilities and numerous other causes. In 1915, she founded the HKI-Helen Keller Institutional organization which is devoted to research in vision, health and nutrition. Helen travelled to more than 39 countries and became a favourite of the Japanese. In 1912, she joined the IWW-Industrial Workers of the World.
Helen wrote several pieces of writing. The earliest was the Frost King (1891). She published her auto biography, The Story of My Life (1903), The World I Live In (1980), Out of the Dark (1913) and My Religion (1927). She wrote 12 published books. On September 14,1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom one of the highest civilian honours of the United States. She devoted much of her later life to raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind. Helen left this world on June 1,1968 at her home in Connecticut.
Her life has always been a source of inspiration to many. She became the subject of many movies and TV serials. She was listed in the Gallup’s Most Widely Admired People in 1999 and her statue was unveiled in 2009 at the United States Capital Building. Her life-story is unusual as well as inspiring.
More Resources for CBSE Class 10
- NCERT Solutions
- NCERT Solutions for Class 10 Science
- NCERT Solutions for Class 10 Maths
- NCERT Solutions for Class 10 Social
- NCERT Solutions for Class 10 English
- NCERT Solutions for Class 10 Hindi
- NCERT Solutions for Class 10 Sanskrit
- NCERT Solutions for Class 10 Foundation of IT
- RD Sharma Class 10 Solutions
Helen
Keller
was
Helen Keller lived in a small house which consisted of a large square room and a small one in which the servant slept. There was a custom in the south to build a small house near the homestead as an annex to be used on occasion and such a house was built by her father after the Civil War. After his marriage to Kate, Helen’s mother, he shifted to
that house. The house was covered with vines, climbing roses and honeysuckles. There was a screen of yellow roses and Southern Smilax which hid the, little porch. It was the favourite haunt of humming birds and bees. The family lived in the Keller Homestead, also known as ‘Ivy Green’ because the house, the surrounding trees and fences were covered with ivy. Helen considered the house as the paradise of her childhood.
born
on
June
27,
But after sometime, Helen started realising that she was different from others. She noticed that sign language was not used by other people but they used their lips to talk. She used to touch their lips and then hers. She could feel the difference and sometimes she used to get so angry that she kicked and screamed till she got exhausted.
Helen was a naughty girl. She used to kick her nurse Ella and dominated her cook’s daughter Martha Washington. Her sources of interest were the sheds where the com was stored, the stable where horses were kept and the yards where the cows were milked. Once she was saved from fire by her old nurse, Viny. In this way her mischiefs kept on increasing. By this time, she had found out the use of a key and locked her mother in the pantry for three hours. Her mother kept on pounding on the’door, while she sat outside on the steps and laughed. This was the naughtiest prank ever done by Helen and Miss Sullivan was appointed as a teacher. But Helen locked even her and hid the key under the wardrobe in the hall. Miss Sullivan was taken out through the window.
1880
in
Tuscumbia,
northern
Alabama
.
her
grandmother
was
the
daughter
of
Alexander
Moore
and
second
cousin
to
Robert
E
Lee
One day, while enjoying the waves, her attention was attracted by Miss Sullivan towards a horseshoe crab.
‘ Helen was amazed when she fell the crab ‘carrying his house on his back’. She took it home to make her pet. When she reached home, she put the crab in a trough near the well, confident enough that it was secure. The next morning she went to meet her little pet only to realize that it had disappeared. There was no answer to where and how he had escaped. She was disappointed but later felt it was better for the dumb creature as perhaps he had returned to the sea where he belonged.
.
her
father
suggested
the
name
Helen spent almost every winter in the North after her first visit to Boston. Once she went on a visit to a New England village and there she had her first experience of snowfall. The earth seemed benumbed by its icy touch. The grass and bushes were turned into icicles. They all sat around the great fire and told merry tales to each other. The snowfall stopped after three days. Everything looked like figures in a marble freeze. As the days passed on, the trees lost their ice covering and the bushes became bare once the sun shone brightly.
The favourite amusement during the winter was tobogganing. They would get on their toboggan, somebody would shove them and they would swoop down the lake to the opposite bank. It was great fun.
of
In this chapter Helen tells us how she learned to speak and what efforts she made for it. It was in the spring of 1890 that Helen learned to speak though she had been practising it for months. The impulse to produce audible sounds had always been strong within her. She would put one hand on her throat and with the other hand she tried to feel the movements of her lips. When she was in her mother’s lap, she would move her hand on her face to feel how her lips moved. It gave her immense joy. Before she lost her sight and hearing, she was fast learning to speak. She also remembered the first word that she uttered was water. She pronounced it ‘wa-wa’. Then her illness snatched her sight and hearing. Then with the help of Miss Sullivan she practiced to communicate by feeling letters with her fingers. But she was not satisfied with it and was very eager to speak with her mouth. At last her efforts bore fruit and she learned to speak in 1890.
In 1890, Mrs. Lamson, who had taught Laura Bridgman and had just returned from a visit to Norway and Sweden, came to meet her. She told Helen how a blind and deaf girl of Norway named Ragnhild Kaata was taught to speak. The story of Mrs. Lamson infused Helen with a new hope and she resolved that she would also learn to speak. Her teacher, Miss Sullivan took her for advice and assistance to Miss Sarah Fuller. The kind lady took upon herself the responsibility to teach her. Thus, she began her education under the guidance of Miss. Sarah Fuller in March 1890.
Mildred
Campbell
but
In the winter of 1892, there occurred such an incident that blotted out the bright sky of Helen’s childhood and for a long time she remained in a state of suspicion, anxiety and dejection. Books lost their charm for her. The main cause of the trouble was a story ‘The Frost King’ which she wrote to send as a gift to Mr. Anagnos on his birthday. Mr. Anagnos was the Director of Perkins Institute for the Blind.
Helen wrote this story in the autumn after she had learned to speak. Having returned from Fern Quarry, one day Miss Sullivan told her about the beauty of new foliages. Miss Sullivan’s version of new verdure reminded Helen of some story that had been read to her some times earlier. It occurred to her that the outline of the story had taken shape in her mind and she at once sat down to write it lest the idea should slip from her mind. Words and images flowed from her pen as if they had been on her finger’s end. Her only aim to write the story was to please Mr. Anagnos and to prove to her friends that she could accomplish what many think to do but only few attain success in putting words in a systematic order. Little did she know that the publication of the story would shatter the glass house of her fantasy and splinters of disgrace would continue to prick her conscience for a long time to come. Having completed the story, Helen read it to her friends and the members of her family. They were astonished to know that Helen could write so well. Actually, the story was written so nicely that none believed that it was the product of the brain of someone who was a spring chicken in the field of writing. When someone asked her if it was her own composition, she answered firmly that it was the child of her own imagination. On the suggestion of her friends and teacher, the title of the story was changed from ‘Autumn Leaves’ to ‘The Frost King’.
Helen posted the letter to Mr. Anagnos who was delighted to receive this unexpected gift from a blind and deaf 1
girl. He published the story in a report of the Perkins Institute. The publication of the story was the pinnacle of her happiness. But after the publication of the story, the fact came into light that almost the same story had appeared before her birth in a book named ‘Birdie and His Friends’, under the title ‘The Frost Fairies’. It was written by Miss Margaret T. Canby. The thoughts and language of the two stories were so akin to each other, that it was evident that Helen had heard the story of Miss Canby and that her own story was a plagiarism. It was a great shock to Helen and she felt much, disgraced. Her friends began to doubt her talent and looked at her with suspicion. Helen tried her best to recall if she had ever heard Miss Canby’s story, but she did not remember. Mr. Anagnos, though deeply troubled, believed her innocence. A few days after this sad incident, Helen went to attend Washington’s birthday celebration.
on
the
Miss Sullivan had never read Miss Canby’s story. Later after much investigation and discussion, Miss Sullivan and Dr. Graham Bell reached the conclusion that Helen might have read Miss Canby’s story during her stay with Miss Hopkins. Whatever may be, Helen had to accept that she must have read Miss Canby’s story and that long after she ,
had forgotten it, it came back to her so naturally that she thought it the child of her own mind.
way,
her
father
