Ironically, these same conventions were the baseline through which Keller’s accomplishments were viewed as impossibly high-it was precisely because Keller was deaf and blind that her erudition and graduation from Radcliffe College were perceived as extraordinary. The social conventions that generally associated blindness with infirmity and incapacity would probably not, according to Nielsen, have tolerated the idea of a disabled teacher leading a disabled student to such heights. Yet Keller’s success and the stigma of disability combined to prevent Macy from self-identifying as disabled. She, like many impaired persons then and now, underwent multiple surgeries intended to fix the problem and, also like many impaired persons then and now, was a chronic pain sufferer for most of her life. Macy lived with trachoma and, as a result, she gradually lost her eyesight. The second contribution Nielsen makes is through the constant reminder that Macy’s narrative is itself a narrative of disability. Even correspondence with others tends to revolve around the household life and the relationship between Macy and Keller, which included many domestic concerns common to families of the time (e.g., financial concerns, real estate transactions, occupational decisions, illness management, social engagements, travel plans, etc.). Of course, given the close relationship between the two women for over four decades, much of the material Nielsen draws on is correspondence between Macy and Keller. In other words, while it is true that we know about Macy primarily because she taught Keller, Nielsen demonstrates that we can use the plethora of primary sources surrounding Keller’s life to examine and interpret Macy’s own life. Nielsen inverts this hierarchy by examining Macy’s lifeworld through the letters, documents, and sources that have congregated around Keller’s own narratives. But it would be a grievous mistake to perceive the importance of Macy’s life story solely in terms of its role in shaping the Helen Keller that the world embraced, because this framework simply reinforces the aforementioned trope that pins Macy’s life as instrumental to the greater glory of Keller’s. The profundity of Keller’s life and accomplishments is inextricably linked with the depth and quality of the decades-long relationship Keller shared with Macy.
First and foremost, it is testament to a basic tenet of the phenomenology of disability: the lived experiences of disability are largely a function of the social lives, support, and resources available to an impaired person, rather than of the clinical nature of the impairment itself. Nielsen’s work is a significant contribution for a number of reasons. The popularity of Keller’s narrative played on Macy herself, as author Kim E. And for only the second occasion in the last sixty years, someone has stepped forward to remind readers that the story of Keller’s life is in an important sense the story of the relationship with her teacher (Macy), rather than simply an individual triumph. Teacher, governess, interpreter, parent, caregiver, agent, child, and friend are but some of the roles Anne Sullivan Macy (1866-1936) played to Helen Keller (1880-1968). Beyond the Miracle Worker: The Remarkable Life of Anne Sullivan Macy and Her Extraordinary Friendship with Helen Keller.