The Imprisoned Guest: Samuel Howe and Laura Bridgman, The Original Deaf-Blind Girl
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.50 (617 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0312420293 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 352 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-04-08 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Her troubling, tumultuous relationship with Howe, who rode her achievements to his own fame but could not cope with the intense, demanding adult she became, sheds light on the contradictory attitudes of a reform era in which we can find some precursors to our own.. But as the Civil War loomed and her girlish appeal faded, the public began to lose interest. By the time Laura died in 1889, she had been wholly eclipsed by Helen Keller.The Imprisoned Guest recovers Laura Bridgman's forgotten life, placing it in the context of nineteenth-century American social, intellectual, and cultural history. In 1837, Samuel Gridley Howe, the ambitious director of Boston's Perkins Institution for the Blind, heard about Laura Bridgman, a bright deaf-blind seven-year-old, the daughter of New Hampshire farmers. She quickly became a major tourist attraction, and many influential writers and reformers—Carlyle, Dickens, and Hawthorne among them—visited her or wrote about her. He resolved to dazzle the world by rescuing her from the "darkness and silence of the tomb." And indeed, thanks to Howe and an extraordinary group of female teachers, Laura learned to finger-spell, to read raised letters, and to write legibly and even eloquently.Philosophers, poets, educators, theologians, and early psychologists hailed Laura as a moral inspiration and a living laboratory for the most
"Splendid Story, Fascinating History" according to Conrad Coleridge. The long-forgotten story of Laura Bridgman is riveting: She was the first deaf, blind and mute American to learn English and she did so through the ingenious efforts of Samuel Howe. If author Elisabeth Gitter had done nothing more than reintroduce this story to the world, her book would have been worthwhile. But Gitter does much more. Both Bridgman and Howe were enormously complicated, infinitely fascinating characters and their relationship was unprecedented in human experience (quite a statement, but it's true!). It is incredible, and in many ways, heart-wrenching, to wa. "Sensitive and Well Written" according to Joanne & the Dogs. Elisabeth Gitter has introduced the 21st Century reader to Laura Bridgman, "the original deaf-blind girl" in her well written and sensitive portrayal of "this pitiful little girl" who "became the most celebrated child in (19th Century) America." Along with her teacher and mentor, Samuel Howe, founder of the first school for the blind in America, Laura became an inspiration for the indominability of the human spirit. Yet, as Gitter wisely and perceptively shows, the multi-faceted character behind Laura's public persona was often overlooked by Howe in his zeal to show the wo. "Ah ,the whole story!" according to D. Klevorn. Great read packed with info. I've always wanted to know more about her, not just the vague references made in books about Keller and Sullivan.
From Publishers Weekly Samuel Howe, director of the Perkins Institution for the Blind, was caught up in the enlightenment fervor that swept Boston in the 1830s and '40sa period characterized by humanitarian and scientific zeal. Victorian studies scholar Gitter, an English professor at the City University of New York's John Jay College, skillfully evokes the social, intellectual and cultural context in which Howe and Bridgman transformed public perception of people with multiple disabilities. This highly absorbing and entertaining study will intrigue readers interested in 19th-century America and in biographies that bring female public figures out of history's woodwork. Although Bridgman's fame was later eclipsed by Helen Keller's, Gitter argues with unsentimental feminist conv