Anne Sullivan, who overcame severe adversity as the child of poor Irish immigrants, including near blindness and consignment to a poor house, became Helen Keller's teacher, mentor and lifelong friend. In Keller's idealized telling, Sullivan was the sun around which Helen revolved, and was tirelessly hardworking, persevering, loyal, protective and loving toward her pupil. So profound was Sullivan's effect on Keller's life that Keller described it in spiritual terms:
Thus I came up out of...
Anne Sullivan, who overcame severe adversity as the child of poor Irish immigrants, including near blindness and consignment to a poor house, became Helen Keller's teacher, mentor and lifelong friend. In Keller's idealized telling, Sullivan was the sun around which Helen revolved, and was tirelessly hardworking, persevering, loyal, protective and loving toward her pupil. So profound was Sullivan's effect on Keller's life that Keller described it in spiritual terms:
Thus I came up out of Egypt and stood before Sinai, and a power divine touched my spirit and gave it sight, so that I beheld many wonders. And from the sacred mountain I heard a voice which said, "Knowledge is love and light and vision."
She brought, Keller said, "the light of love."
Sullivan persevered with Keller even after the child angrily broke a doll at her feet, and later persevered in teaching Keller to speak and write:
But for Miss Sullivan's genius, untiring perseverance and devotion, I could not have progressed as far as I have toward natural speech. ...
Had it not been for the persistent encouragement of Miss Sullivan, I think I should have given up trying to write altogether.
Everywhere Keller went, from the World's Fair to schools, Miss Sullivan was at her side. When Keller went to the "Cambridge School:"
Each day Miss Sullivan went to the classes with me and spelled into my hand with infinite patience all that the teachers said. In study hours she had to look up new words for me and read and reread notes and books I did not have in raised print. The tedium of that work is hard to conceive.
Mr. Anagnos, director of the Perkins Institute for the blind, also attested to Sullivan's hard work and perseverance:
"She was obliged to begin her education at the lowest and most elementary point; but she showed from the very start that she had in herself the force and capacity which insure success.... She has finally reached the goal for which she strove so bravely.
Others who watched Miss Sullivan with Helen at various noted the way she protected her charge from "unkind" comments.
Miss Sullivan's loyalty was remarkable. She seemed seldom to stray from her student's side and knew her mind so well that observers saw their communication as almost telepathic. Helen Keller could not have been more fortunate in a teacher: Sullivan, who suffered from the disability of poor eyesight and who had been formed in the crucible of poverty, understood Helen's need for love and had the perseverance to teach her.
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