Miller, Sarah (2007). Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller. NY: Athenaeum Books for Young Readers. 208 pages.
I’ve been a Helen Keller fan for years and have always wondered about her relationship with her teacher, Annie Sullivan, particularly after the two became adults. Did Helen ever get to have sex? How would that proposition have been negotiated? Via Annie? These are just three of the many questions I have about the life of the dynamic duo; questions that Miss Spitfire, Miller’s first novel devoted to the first months of Annie’s life as Helen’s teacher, does not answer.
When, at age 21, impoverished all-but-orphaned Annie Sullivan arrives in Alabama to teach the six-year-old Helen Keller, she discovers not the saint we’ve come to know, but a little hellion who likes to dip her fingers in everyone’s dinner plate and who refuses to wash. Annie knows that Helen needs discipline, but the Keller family is bent on coddling the young deaf and blind girl who, they believe, is probably a “simpleton.” Annie didn’t endure the harsh world of the Tewksbury home for the destitute and the less harsh but still difficult Perkins School for the Blind for nothing; she knows the only way to tame Helen is to break her down and then bring her back up again, kind of like the Marines.
Who knew Annie was so hardcore? The children’s biographies of Helen Keller don’t mention Annie’s strong-arm techniques, which include holding Helen down and even smothering her with a handkerchief to get her to obey. Also, I didn’t realize that it took a very long and painful month for Annie to finally break through to Helen (“water!”). Miller’s novel, told from Annie’s perspective, is a real eye-opener (I couldn’t help it) that suggests parallels between the lives of Annie and Helen and, with these suggestions, explains the pair’s lifelong closeness and understanding.
Each chapter is headed with an excerpt from Annie’s letters to her housemother at the Perkins school for the blind and the narrative makes an attempt at the same late nineteenth century language. I’m saddened that the greater fictional text doesn’t achieve the same matching tone or vocabulary of the letters’ excerpts; this disconnect (of which we are reminded at the beginning of every chapter) makes the story less successful for me. Miller’s first novel does distance itself from any romance accorded the initial relationship between Annie and Helen and it is this that distinguishes the book. For younger teen Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan fans this will be a must read; at my advanced age, I wanted to ante upped a bit. More violence! More tears! Bring it on, Annie S.!
Thanks for reviewing my book!
I don’t usually comment on reviews, but I have a feeling you might really enjoy Georgina Kleege’s book, BLIND RAGE. It doesn’t answer your questions, but it explores them — and many others — in an interesting way. It’s my favorite Helen Keller book.