Crossing the Divide: Representations of Deafness in Biography

2. Crossing the Divide: Yvonne Pitrois and Helen Keller Dialogue about Disability

2 Crossing the Divide Yvonne Pitrois and Helen Keller Dialogue about Disability How does the person living with a difference most effectively cross the cultural divide and explain herself to mainstream society? This is a central question raised by Yvonne Pitrois in her biography of Helen Keller entitled Une nuit rayonnante: Helen Keller (A Shining Night: Helen Keller), to which Helen Keller responded. At the time that Pitrois’s biography of Keller was published in 1922, Helen Keller (1880–1968) was known worldwide as an extraordinary deaf-blind American writer, activist, and socialist. She had already written and published The Story of My Life (1893); an autobiographical portrait of her early years, The World I Live In (1908), a world she described as shaped by sensations of touch; and Out of the Dark (1913), a book of socialist writings. Yvonne Pitrois (1880–1937), although relatively unknown today, was almost equally renowned in her country, France, and, in fact, throughout Europe during her lifetime for her social service and her biographical studies. By 1912 Pitrois had already launched her bimonthly magazine, La Petite Silencieuse (The Little Silent Girl), which provided articles and counseling for deaf women and short biographical sketches of unknown deaf heroes of her age. She had already written numerous longer biographical studies, including her biography of Lincoln , Nobles Vies. Abraham Lincoln, le libérateur des esclaves (1911) (Noble Lives. Abraham Lincoln, the Liberator of the Slaves) and her most famous work, her life of the first committed educator of deaf people in France, La Vie de l’Abbé de l’Epée (1912) (The Life of the Abbé de l’Épée). The two authors had gotten to know one another through the “Cosmopolitan 17 Correspondence Club,” established in 1912 by Mrs. James Muir, a deaf woman from Australia. Her goal was to encourage deaf citizens worldwide , particularly artists and men and women of letters, to communicate with one another, form friendships, and support one another in their creative endeavors. Pitrois was thus uniquely qualified to chronicle Helen Keller’s life. As a fellow literary artist, she understood the particular challenges faced by the deaf writer. Any deaf writer may feel burdened by the need to create in isolation, by a sense of responsibility to serve as a role model for, and to sustain in other ways, those sharing her difference. She may feel a particular charge to create a life worthy of emulation by her brothers and sisters.The burden carried by the deaf writer, and the challenges of defining and exemplifying a creative and dignified life, are beautifully set forth in Pitrois’s biography of Keller. Pitrois was also a particularly good choice in that she herself had become both deaf and blind at the age of seven, probably as the result of sunstroke.Thus, Pitrois can, in some ways, be considered Helen Keller’s French counterpart. Although Pitrois regained her sight, she remained 18 Crossing the Divide Portrait of Yvonne Pitrois. Courtesy of Michelle Balle of the Institut National de Jeunes Sourds. deaf all her life. She never forgot those years without vision, however, and demonstrated throughout her career a passionate desire both to chronicle and to serve her deaf and deaf-blind contemporaries. Her biography of Helen Keller, in particular, reflects this empathy for the issues that disabled people need to address in their lives. She focuses, in particular, on the tension between self-definition and isolation and the need for the disabled person to connect in an appropriate way with the larger society. This empathy that arises from Pitrois’s own experience of disability is reinforced by her positive attitude toward challenge. Certainly Helen Keller’s often stated belief that obstacles exist so that we can overcome them was shared by Pitrois. Both believed that we define ourselves and reconnect to others through education, hard work, and strength of will. Pitrois knew, however, that these values must be modeled for us all by an early teacher. Pitrois’s mother, Marguerite Pitrois, an author in her own right, known for her books for children, had served that function for Yvonne. For this reason, perhaps, Pitrois was keenly aware of the equally dramatic impact that Anne Sullivan had had on the life of young Helen Keller, and Part 1 of the biography—by far the most powerful section of the book—recounts the story of Helen’s...