sexta-feira, 31 de julho de 2015
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terça-feira, 28 de julho de 2015
Nordau - Will and true
The stronger the will, so much the more completely can we adapt the whole organism to a given presentation, so much the more can we obtain sense impressions which serve to enhance this presentation, so much the more can we by association induce memory-images, which complete and rectify the presentation, so much the more definitely can we suppress the presentations which disturb it or are foreign to it; in a word, so much the more exhaustive and correct will our knowledge be of phenomena and their true connection.
Max Nordau, Degeneration
Laura Bridgman
Laura Bridgman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Laura Dewey Lynn Bridgman | |
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| Born | December 21, 1829 Hanover, New Hampshire |
| Died | May 24, 1889 (aged 59) Boston, Massachusetts |
| Resting place | Dana Cemetery, Hanover, New Hampshire |
| Education | Perkins School for the Blind |
| Signature | |
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Contents
Early years
Laura Bridgman was born in Hanover, New Hampshire, the third daughter of Daniel Bridgman, a Baptist farmer, and his wife Harmony, daughter of Cushman Downer, and granddaughter of Joseph Downer, one of the five first settlers (1761) of Thetford, Vermont. Laura was a delicate infant, small and rickety, and suffered from convulsions until she was eighteen months old.[2] Her family was struck with scarlet fever when Laura was two years old. The illness killed her two older sisters and left her deaf, blind, and without a sense of smell or taste.[3] Though she gradually recovered her health, she remained deaf and blind. Laura's mother kept her well-groomed and showed the child affection, but Laura received little attention from the rest of her family, including her father who, on occasion, tried to "frighten her into obedience" by stamping his foot hard on the floor to startle her with the vibrations.[4] Her closest friend was a kind, mentally impaired hired man of the Bridgmans, Asa Tenney, whom she credited with making her childhood happy. Tenney had some kind of expressive language disorder himself, and communicated with Laura in signs. He knew Native Americans who used a sign language, (probably Abenaki using Plains Indian Sign Language), and had begun to teach Laura to express herself using these signs when she was sent away to school.[5]Education at the Perkins School
Bridgman circa 1855. Daguerreotype by Southworth & Hawes
Howe had recently met Julia Brace, a deaf-blind resident at the American School for the Deaf who communicated by using a series of primitive signs; however, her instructors had failed to teach her more advanced methods of communication, such as tactile sign language.[11] Howe developed a plan to teach Bridgman to read and write through tactile means — something that had not been attempted previously, to his knowledge. Howe's plan was based on the theories of the French philosopher Denis Diderot, who believed the sense of touch could develop its "own medium of symbolic language."[12] At first he and his assistant, Lydia Hall Drew, used words printed with raised letters, and later they progressed to using a manual alphabet expressed through tactile sign.[13] Eventually she received a broad education.
Howe taught Bridgman words before the individual letters. His first experiment consisted of pasting paper labels upon several common articles such as keys, spoons, and knives, with the names of the articles printed in raised letters. He then had her feel the labels by themselves, and she learned to associate the raised letters with the articles to which they referred. Eventually, she could find the right label for each object from a mixed heap. The next stage was to give her the individual letters and teach her to combine them to spell the words she knew. Gradually, in this way, she learned the alphabet and the ten digits. The whole process showed that she had human intelligence, which only required stimulation, and her own interest in learning became keener as she progressed.[14]
Howe devoted himself to Bridgman's education and was rewarded with increasing success. On July 24, 1839 she first wrote her own name legibly.[15] On June 20, 1840 she had her first arithmetic lesson, with the aid of a metallic case perforated with square holes, square types being used; and in nineteen days she could add a column of figures amounting to thirty. She was in good health and happy, and was treated by Howe as his daughter. She lived in the director's apartment with Howe and his sister, Jeannette Howe, until Howe married Julia Ward in 1843.[16] Her case already began to interest the public, and others were brought to Dr. Howe for treatment.
Fame
From the beginning of his work with Bridgman, Howe sent accounts of her progress and his teaching strategies to European journals, which were "read by thousands."[17] In January 1842 Charles Dickens visited the Institution, and afterwards wrote enthusiastically in his American Notes of Howe's success with Bridgman. Of Bridgman, Dickens wrote:Her social feelings, and her affections, are very strong; and when she is sitting at work, or by the side of one of her little friends, she will break off from her task every few moments, to hug and kiss them with an earnestness and warmth that is touching to behold. When left alone, she occupies and apparently amuses herself, and seems quite content; and so strong seems to be the natural tendency of thought to put on the garb of language, that she often soliloquizes in the finger language, slow and tedious as it is. But it is only when alone, that she is quiet; for if she becomes sensible of the presence of any one near her, she is restless until she can sit close beside them, hold their hand, and converse with them by sign.[18]Following the publication of Dickens' book, Bridgman became world famous. Thousands of people visited her at the Perkins School, "asked for keepsakes, followed her in the newspapers, and read paeans to her in evangelical journals and ladies' magazines".[19] On Saturdays, the school was open to the public. Crowds gathered to watch Laura read and point out locations on a map with raised letters. Laura became "very much excited" by these events, but her teachers were concerned because Laura knew she drew more attention than the other students.[20] In the late 1840s, Howe said that "perhaps there are not three living women whose names are more widely known than [Laura Bridgman's]; and there is not one who has excited so much sympathy and interest."[21]
Teenage years
Bridgman suffered a series of emotional losses during her teenage years and early twenties. In 1841, Lydia Drew, Laura's first teacher at the Perkins School, left her teaching position to marry. Drew was replaced by Mary Swift, an excellent teacher, though not as openly affectionate with Bridgman as Drew had been.[22] Swift also attempted to instill Bridgman with her Congregationalist religious views in direct defiance of Howe's New England Unitarianism.[23] An even more devastating loss occurred in May 1843 when Howe married Julia Ward, a woman 18 years his junior. Howe had treated Bridgman as a daughter, and she had loved him as a father. She was depressed by the lengthy separation following the marriage—the Howes' honeymoon in Europe lasted 15 months—and worried that Howe would no longer love her now that he had taken a wife.[24] Bridgman's fears were realized when the couple returned from their honeymoon in August 1844. Howe had lost interest in Bridgman, though he had made provisions for her to have a home at the school for life.[25] Neither did Bridgman ever develop a close relationship with Julia Ward Howe who, according to her daughters, had a "physical distaste for the abnormal and defective" and a "natural shrinking from the blind and other defectives with whom she was often thrown" following her marriage to Howe.[26]
Bridgman and Sarah Wight, circa 1845 [27]
In 1845, Bridgman developed anorexia, her weight falling from 113 pounds to 79 pounds.[34] Howe rightly surmised that Bridgman was "reacting to the many abandonments and losses she had endured,"[35] and he proposed that she pay a visit to her family, with whom she had had little contact in recent years. Accompanied by Wight, Bridgman traveled to her family's New Hampshire farm in June 1846. She particularly enjoyed being reunited with her mother, sisters Mary and Collina, and brother Addison, who was able to communicate with Bridgman in sign language. She was also reunited with her old friend Asa Tenney, who visited her frequently during her two-week stay.[36] Though Bridgman resumed eating, her often obstinate and temperamental behavior persisted; this troubled Wight, who understood that few people would endure such conduct in a grown woman.[37]
Wight left the Perkins School in November 1850, having spent five years as Bridgman's teacher and companion.[38] Wight was engaged to a Unitarian missionary, George Bond, and following their marriage, the couple planned to travel to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii).[39] Bridgman begged to go along as Wight's housekeeper, but ultimately Wight went without her, leaving Bridgman with no friend, companion, or teacher to console her.[40]
Religion
With no outward sources of consolation, Bridgman turned inward to prayer and meditation.[41] She eventually embraced her family's Baptist religion and was baptized in July 1852.[42] She began occasionally to write devotional poems, of which "Holy Home" is the best known:Heaven is holy home.
Holy Home is from ever
lasting to ever lasting.
Holy home is Summery.
Holy home shall endure
forever...[43]
Bridgman feared death, but she saw heaven as a "place where these fears might at last be laid to rest".[44]
Adult years
A colorful doily made by Laura Bridgman, similar to the doily shown in the above photograph.
Bridgman lived a relatively quiet and uneventful life at the school. She never became a full-time teacher, but she did assist the young blind girls in their sewing classes where she was considered a "patient but demanding instructor."[50] In 1872, several cottages (each under a matron) for the blind girls were added to the Perkins campus, and Bridgman was moved from the larger house of the Institution into one of them. Bridgman, always eager for someone to communicate with in sign language, befriended Anne Sullivan when they shared a cottage in the early 1880s.[51] The death of Howe in 1876 was a great grief to her; but before he died he had made arrangements ensuring her financial security at the school for the rest of her life. In 1887 her jubilee was celebrated there, but in 1889 she was taken ill, and she died on May 24. She was buried at Dana Cemetery in Hanover, New Hampshire near her family's farm. The tombstone marking her grave reads:[52]
LAURA DEWEY BRIDGMAN
December 21, 1829 – May 24, 1889
DEAF DUMB AND BLIND
FROM TWO YEARS OLD
EDUCATED AT THE PERKINS INSTITUTION
SOUTH BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS
December 21, 1829 – May 24, 1889
DEAF DUMB AND BLIND
FROM TWO YEARS OLD
EDUCATED AT THE PERKINS INSTITUTION
SOUTH BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS
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