"The Frost King" (originally titled "Autumn Leaves"
) is a short story about King
Jack Frost
Jack Frost is a personification of frost, ice, snow, sleet, winter, and freezing cold. He is a variant of Old Man Winter who is held responsible for frosty weather, nipping the fingers and toes in such weather, coloring the foliage in autumn, ...
written by
Helen Keller, then 11.
[Bérubé, Michael]
Written in Memory
''The Nation.'' July 17, 2003. Keller's teacher,
Anne Sullivan
Anne Sullivan Macy (born as Johanna Mansfield Sullivan; April 14, 1866 – October 20, 1936) was an American teacher best known for being the instructor and lifelong companion of Helen Keller.Herrmann, Dorothy. ''Helen Keller: A Life'', Alfred ...
, had mentioned that the autumn leaves were "painted ruby, emerald, gold, crimson, and brown," and Keller, by her own account, imagined
fairies
A fairy (also fay, fae, fey, fair folk, or faerie) is a type of mythical being or legendary creature found in the folklore of multiple European cultures (including Celtic, Slavic, Germanic, English, and French folklore), a form of spirit, o ...
doing the work. Keller wrote a story about how a cask of jewels, being transported by fairy servants, had melted in the sun and covered the leaves.
As a birthday gift, Keller sent the story to
Michael Anagnos
Michael Anagnos (; November 7, 1837 – June 29, 1906) was a trustee and later second director of the Perkins School for the Blind. He was an author, educator, and human rights activist. Anagnos is well known for his work with Helen Keller.
...
, the head of the
Perkins School for the Blind
Perkins School for the Blind, in Watertown, Massachusetts, was founded in 1829 and is the oldest school for the blind in the United States. It has also been known as the Perkins Institution for the Blind.
Perkins manufactures its own Perkins Br ...
, who published the story in the January 1892 edition of ''The Mentor,'' the Perkins alumni magazine. It was picked up by ''The Goodson Gazette'', a journal on deaf-blind education, based in
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
.
Controversy
A friend, one of the Perkins teachers informed the ''Gazette'' that Keller's story was a reproduction of "Frost Fairies" from Margaret Canby's book ''Birdie and His Fairy Friends.''
''The Gazette'' ran both stories, and the editor commented that he believed it a deliberate attempt at
fraud
In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compens ...
by Keller's handlers. Keller insisted she had no memory of having read the book or having had it read to her, but passages in her letters from the period, which she describes as "dreams", strongly resembled other episodes in the book.
In Sullivan's account of the incident, addressed to John Hitz of the
Volta Bureau
The Volta Laboratory (also known as the Alexander Graham Bell Laboratory, the Bell Carriage House and the Bell Laboratory) and the Volta Bureau were created in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. by Alexander Graham Bell.(19/20th-century scientist and ...
, she had investigated to see who could have read the story to Helen or even owned a copy of the book. It seemed her own mentor, Sophia Hopkins, had taken charge of the then eight-year-old Keller while Sullivan was on vacation, and had read the book to her through
finger spelling
Fingerspelling (or dactylology) is the representation of the letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands. These manual alphabets (also known as finger alphabets or hand alphabets) have often been used in deaf e ...
. Keller stated that she remembered nothing of that and that she was devastated that people she had loved and trusted would accuse her of lying.
Similar stories
''
Father Frost''
Jack Frost
Jack Frost is a personification of frost, ice, snow, sleet, winter, and freezing cold. He is a variant of Old Man Winter who is held responsible for frosty weather, nipping the fingers and toes in such weather, coloring the foliage in autumn, ...
folklore
''
Old Man Winter
Old Man Winter is a personification of winter. The name is a colloquialism for the winter season derived from ancient Greek mythology and Old World Paganism, pagan beliefs evolving into modern characters in both literature and popular culture. He ...
''
References to King Frost in popular culture include the temporal ''"The reign of King Frost had begun"'' in a 1920s dime romance novel.
Anagnos was apparently willing to believe that Keller had simply adapted the story from buried memories. However, Keller further discussed the matter with one of the Perkins teachers and, as she remembered it, "something I said made her think she detected in my words a confession" that she had knowingly plagiarized the story. The teacher's own detailed account, which was only discovered in 1978 and published in Joseph Lash's ''Helen and Teacher,'' confirms that Keller told her Sullivan had read her "Frost Fairies" the previous fall and that she had adapted her own story out of that one.
By all accounts, the teacher reported what Keller had told her to Anagnos. A storm of outrage swept through the school, apparently headed by the teachers. Keller's biographers, particularly Joseph P. Lash, suggest that they were also incensed by the fact that Sullivan and Keller used the facilities although they were neither employed by nor officially registered with the school.
An in-house "trial" ensued to determine whether or not Sullivan had deliberately falsified Keller's abilities; eight teachers interrogated the 12-year-old child for two hours and fought the issue to a draw, the tie-breaking vote being cast by Anagnos in Keller's favor. Although Sullivan protested that "all use of language is imitative, and one's style is made up of all other styles that one has met," and even Canby came forward to say that Keller's version was superior to her own, Anagnos never regained his faith in Sullivan or Keller and described them years later as "a living lie." Keller had a
nervous breakdown
A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...
over the incident, and never wrote fiction again.
In 1978, an anonymously written typescript, "Miss Sullivan's Methods," was uncovered at the Perkins Institute library.
[, p. 134. See also "Touching Words," by Jim Swan, in ''The Construction of authorship: textual appropriation in Law and Literature'', ed. by Martha Woodmansee, p. 57.] Joseph Lash describes it as an analysis of ''The Story of My Life,'' probably written by David Prescott Hall in 1906 just after the death of Michael Anagnos. The text identifies many of Keller's letters as containing paraphrases of Canby's writing as well as verbatim passages. Keller and Sullivan cited some of them in their own explanation of what happened, and Sullivan stated several times Keller's writings at the time contained extensive paraphrases of either what she had read or what she had ''had'' read ''to'' her. The document also contains the text of the letter written by the Perkins teacher in which she transcribed the conversation with Keller that had led to the inquiry.
Lash believes the author of the document was trying to prove Sullivan, not Hopkins, had read ''Birdie and his Fairy Friends'' to Keller and had done so the same autumn, not four years previously. He concludes that if that was the case:
* Keller wrote "The Frost King" as another of her paraphrased stories, which was similar to what she had been writing in her letters of the period.
* Sullivan, who always checked Keller's writings before allowing them to be mailed, would have recognized "The Frost King" as a paraphrase but considered it to be sufficiently original that she passed it on as Keller's own work.
* Sullivan may not have understood what plagiarism is.
* When Keller was accused, Sullivan attempted a cover-up by denying she had read the ''Birdie'' stories and impressing upon Keller the importance of stating that Hopkins had read her the stories years before.
The story was later published in
Keller's 1903 biography with a complete analysis of both stories and the incident.
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...
, after reading about this incident from a copy of the biography Helen had given him, was inspired to write his famous "St Patrick's Day 1903" letter to her in which he described the controversy as "owlishly idiotic and grotesque."
Notes
References
What Helen Saw ''New Yorker'' article discussing Helen's life and accusations of plagiarism and coaching throughout her life.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Frost King
1891 short stories
Fictional humanoids
Folklore characters
Works involved in plagiarism controversies
Jack Frost
Helen Keller
Fictional kings
Fictional snowmen