Deaf American Prose 1830-1930

What One Girl Hears and Sees

112 Hypatia Boyd Hypatia Boyd (1874–1930) Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Boyd lost her hearing from scarlet fever at the age of six and a half, after she had already learned to speak. She then attended the Milwaukee Day School for the Deaf, an oral school that forbade both signing and fingerspelling. After graduating from the Milwaukee Day School, Boyd attended a local hearing high school, relying solely on lipreading. Alexander Graham Bell cited her success as an example of what “orally trained deaf people could accomplish.” She later became the first deaf student accepted by the University of Wisconsin. She again depended upon speech and speech-reading skills for one year at the university. However, she changed the course of her life by becoming a teacher at the Wisconsin School for the Deaf. She then met and married a signing and nonspeaking deaf man named Charles Reed. Boyd went on to write numerous profiles, short prose pieces, and interviews in various publications in the “Little Paper Family.” Included in this collection are two pieces from Boyd’s “What One Girl Hears and Sees” series in The Silent Worker (1901).17 c What One Girl Hears and Sees THE SUBJECT OF Deaf Women and their Work, has not been exhausted as yet, —there are a few more professions to discuss—but just now one feels the need of what David Hartman termed, “a change o’ feed once in a while,” in other words, it is believed that an indulgence in a variety of random literary subjects, differing from the usual course hitherto pursued in this department, would not be out of place for a time. The writer has often wondered if it is true, as one married woman believes, that deafness exerts an unpleasant effect on one’s walking in the evening, especially if one 17. John Vickrey Van Cleve and Barry A. Crouch, A Place of Their Own: Creating the Deaf Community in America (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1989), 152–54. “What One Girl Hears and Sees” is from The Silent Worker 13, no. 6 (February 1901). What One Girl Hears and Sees 113 walks alone. It may be a psychological or a physiological effect, but at any rate as the subject has apparently never been discussed by the deaf press, we believe it would be worth while to present the salient points of the story related by the lady mentioned, so that others may give their verdict of the matter in hand. The young woman,—we will call her Mrs. Geddes—had arrived in a certain city early one evening, in order to attend a convention of the deaf, and by pre-arrangement, she met Mr. Blank who escorted her to her friend’s house. Now, the friend’s house was not very far from the depot, and, accordingly Mr. Blank suggested that a walk would perhaps refresh Mrs. Geddes. She agreed to this, because she took it for granted that owing to custom, or etiquette, her escort would offer his arm in guiding her through the streets. However, sad as it would seem, the deaf bachelor never offered his arm, and the poor woman, who had been bred in an aristocratic and genteel atmosphere, found that to walk unaided in the dark, was an exceedingly difficult and trying ordeal. She somehow felt like a ship without an anchor, and it was no easy task to keep a normal, easy gait, without relying on a strong, masculine arm for guidance. And Mrs. Geddes , in relating that night’s dreadful experience, inquired of the writer if such peculiar walking was not attributable to deafness. Well, if we had a degree of M.D. added to our name, we feel confident that we could answer the question satisfactorily. But as it is, we can only say that while we have never experienced such a difficulty as to find walking without the help of an escort, an unpleasant task, yet our discussion of the matter with several intelligent deaf persons, reveals the fact that other deaf suffer in a similar way, and when asked if they regarded deafness as the direct cause, answered that they believed it might be so. But “might be so” is no definite answer. Therefore, we hope that Alexander the Great and others, by virtue of their wide and intimate acquaintance with the deaf of the country, may give us light on the subject. Speaking of married women reminds one that Martha, a member...