Reading Victorian Deafness. Jennifer Esmail
writing is valuable only insofar as it intersects with Bridgman’s disabilities: “[T]he interest excited by [Bridgman’s] writings is essentially non-literary, it is human and psychological. Having no conception of the value of sound, the quality which we call style was not be hoped for in anything she could write.”119Despite their assertion that there is no room for literary interest in Bridgman’s poetry, the Howes append an essay titled “The Writings of Laura Bridgman” to the end of their book. This essay was written not by a literary critic but by a psychologist, E. C. Sanford, who argues that “a word upon Laura Bridgman’s ‘poems’ is sufficient.”120Like Lamson and the Howe sisters, Sanford distances himself from the use of the term poetry for Bridgman’s poems. He highlights the speciousness of the label through enclosing it in quotation marks and dismisses the poems through indicating that they can be dealt with in only “a word.”
Even Gallaudet, the promoter and defender of deaf poetry, sidesteps the use of the term poetry when referring to Bridgman’s writing. In his Harper’s article “Poetry of the Deaf,” he writes, “[I]t is a fact that Laura Bridgman, the mere mention of whose name touches a chord of sympathy in every heart, has lately, in the evening of her days, given expression to her reflections in a form that is highly poetic, even though her lines do not follow the modern models of versification.”121The sentimental tone of Gallaudet’s introduction, typical of writings about Bridgman, coupled with his refusal to refer to her writing as “poetry” in favor of the noncommittal phrase “reflections in a form that is highly poetic,” demonstrate that even he holds to the necessity of fixed patterns of versification. In fact, every poem he includes in “Poetry of the Deaf,” aside from Bridgman’s, has a very regular pattern of rhyme and meter even though the poets he quotes from did not always write such tightly rhymed and regularly metered poems.
Beyond the ways that deaf poetry could be denied generic authority through how it was framed, the forms of publication of deaf poetry restricted its reach at times. Most deaf poets published their work in forums for deaf audiences, such as deaf journals and newspapers. Other deaf poets, as Gallaudet notes, were students and professors working at the National Deaf-Mute College in Washington, D.C.; at this college, the existence of a deaf poet was rather commonplace. In fact, public presentations of occasional poetry written by deaf people were often used to mark important events at the college. Furthermore, the authorial decision to target a narrow, specific, or marginalized audience instead of curry favor with a wider reading public was often constructed as deliberate. For instance, at the end of her poem “The Realm of Singing,” Searing explicitly reveals her social aims: the singing bird-poet decides to sing of her struggles to “the sick, the sad, the maimed, the feeble, the betrayed and the lonely ones” (212). In fact, she refuses the invitation of the elite birds higher in the tree of poetry to join them. The bird decides that it is her calling to stay “down low” and sing to “sweeten [the] sorrow” of those who, like herself, have been trampled by the world (212). Her absurd, inaudible melodies are best suited to the plight of “the weariest of all the world’s wayfarers” (212). Searing’s bird deliberately rejects the standards of song in the “Realm of Singing” and chooses instead to honor her “absurd singing” and those who respect it.
However, in other cases, the conditions and format of the publication of deaf poetry also suggest that the political objectives of some nineteenth-century deaf poets could best be reached through including hearing readers. Deaf poets frequently combined their poetry with historical information and political statements about signed languages, which indicates that they understood their poetry as integral to defending sign language use. For example, Burnet’s book Tales of the Deaf and Dumb with Miscellaneous Poems (1835) is dominated by its preface and introductory section, which present information about signed languages and the experiences of deaf people; in fact, the literary pieces do not appear until page 150 of a 230-page book. As Burnet admits, the title of the book, which indicates its literary slant, “may make it necessary to inform the reader that nearly two-thirds of its contents consist of facts and documents” about “the principles, history, and present state of the art of instructing the deaf and dumb, statistics of the deaf and dumb and anecdotes of deaf and dumb persons” (3). While Burnet’s book title self-identifies as literary, the bulk of his text focuses on the political realities of signed languages and deaf education. Though Burnet acknowledges that “the poetical pieces at the end of the volume might appear to more advantage if published separately,” he expresses hope that they will not be overlooked when prefaced by the factual information he provides (4). Burnet, a deaf teacher of deaf children, published his book early in the nineteenth century when the oralist program was not as influential as it would come to be by the end of the century. Nevertheless, Burnet suggests in his preface that his goal is to inform his readers about the advantages of the manualist system. By uniting his poetry with this treatise on deaf education, Burnet indicates that he considers his literary production instrumental to this aim. Burnet was not alone in appending political, biographical, and historical information about deaf education to his poetry; other deaf poets, including Simpson and Kitto, likewise crafted texts that wove poetry into their reporting of facts about deaf history, education, and language use.
Some nineteenth-century deaf poets also included illustrations of the sign alphabet in their poetic publications in another implicit support of signed languages. Burnet’s book, for example, is not only a vehicle for celebrating signs in education (in both its preface and its poetry) but also an educational text for the propagation of signed languages among his readers. Burnet explains that the engraving on his book’s frontispiece of the one-handed manual alphabet was published so as “to enable any person to acquire the art of talking with the fingers in a few hours” (4). This incorporation of an illustration of a basic finger alphabet initially suggests that Burnet targeted his book to hearing people who did not know how to sign. But Burnet actually imagines his target audience as dual when he describes his intended readers as “the educated deaf and dumb, and those who take an interest in the education of this unfortunate class” (3). The image of the sign alphabet and the information about deafness seem aimed at those who are unfamiliar with deafness rather than deaf people themselves. The poetry itself seems suitable for both audiences as both a testament to deaf people’s abilities aimed at hearing people and a form of literary entertainment for deaf people.
Simpson, who taught at the Old Kent Road deaf school in London, likewise paired his poetry in Daydreams of the Deaf with an introductory preface on the social conditions of deaf people. He aimed “to draw attention to the real condition of [the very peculiar class of mankind to which I belong], and to correct the erroneous impressions and prejudices that exist regarding them” (v). Like Burnet, Simpson intended to educate hearing people about the lives and abilities of deaf people.122Kitto, who communicated primarily through the manual alphabet, included illustrations of the one-handed and two-handed manual alphabets (typically used in North America and Britain, respectively) in The Lost Senses, which also contains his poetry and information about deaf education (figures 1.1 and 1.2). Kitto enumerates the benefits of the manual alphabet and encourages his hearing readers to acquire the skill. The readers of Kitto’s and Burnet’s books are therefore not only learning about the competing systems of deaf education, while reading English poetry produced by these signers, but also are exhorted to learn the sign alphabet so they can communicate with deaf people on their own terms.
Celebrating Sign Language through Written Poetry
In addition to propagating a sign-based form of communication, the poetry written by signing deaf individuals contests commonly held beliefs about the characteristics of sign language because they displace the authority granted to speech and emphasize the communicative potential of the nonverbal and extra-oral. It was not only the sound theory of poetry that led to cultural skepticism about the poetic abilities of deaf people but also Victorian misunderstandings of the properties of signed languages. In opposition to the common alignment of language with speech in nineteenth-century culture, deaf signers understood that signed languages were linguistically sufficient. By and large, the poetry written by nineteenth-century deaf poets celebrates forms of communication outside