After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Emblematically arranged into three sections-“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”-the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife.
In her third book, Doyle ( Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom. Unfortunately, many of the details are murky, and Nielsen is forced to acknowledge that no record of events exists and that her subject’s reactions can only be imagined.Ī sympathetic account hampered by inadequate and often contradictory source materials.
Eventually the Macys separated, but Sullivan and Keller stayed together until the end. Marriage to the much younger John Macy came late in Sullivan’s life, and just how it worked for the threesome is unclear. As an adult, Keller became the duo’s breadwinner, supporting them both financially for many years. It was a painful process, as the stubborn, defensive and proud woman struggled to establish herself as a serious and capable educator. of Wisconsin, Green Bay Helen Keller: Selected Writings, 2005, etc.) demonstrates, that role evolved over time. “They lived intricately intertwined lives,” writes Nielsen, “were deeply dependent upon one another, and loved one another profoundly.” Sullivan’s initial role as governess and teacher is well known, but as Nielsen (History and Women’s Studies/Univ. Her life with Keller began after her graduation from Perkins, and from age 20 until her death she remained with the famous deaf-blind woman. She was not completely blind, but her eyes required numerous surgeries and her sight was always precarious. Sent to an almshouse by her widowed father at age ten, she lived in the grimmest of conditions until admitted to the Perkins Institution, a famous school for the blind in South Boston.
A largely unsuccessful attempt at a full-scale biography of the difficult, unhappy woman whose life story is inseparable from that of Helen Keller.Ĭalled “Teacher” by Keller and popularly known as “The Miracle Worker,” Anne Sullivan was born into poverty in the late 1800s and suffered intense psychological and physical miseries during a lifetime in which she was mostly dependent on others.