Introduction
Silent Life and Silent Language: The Inner Life of a Mute in an Institution for the Deaf is a record of life at a Midwestern residential school between 1869 and 1875. Like the author, Kate M. Farlow (1854–1909), the protagonist of this embellished memoir was deafened in childhood from meningitis and entered what Farlow calls in this book the “I________ Institution” (the Indiana School for the Deaf). As Farlow notes in her preface, “It is through my life [at the Indiana School for the Deaf] that I have obtained the material for my story. Most of the colloquies that occur, and a few of the incidents, were merely composed to bring out some important truths concerning the deaf and dumb; but the story itself is founded on facts” (ix).*
There are few accounts written by American Deaf women in the nineteenth century, and this episodic memoir is all the more remarkable in that it gives a detailed accounting of daily life and learning in a deaf school from someone who experienced it. The forty-two short chapters with descriptive titles such as “Some Glimpses into the Condition and Doings of Deaf-Mutes” and “Some Birthday Customs” include nostalgic and thorough descriptions of the local foods that were served on a daily basis, sumptuous holiday feasts, daily and seasonal play activities, and the training that young Deaf men and women of that era received in the residential schools.
Farlow wrote Silent Life and Silent Language with the intention of helping hearing parents of deaf children understand that their child’s deafness was not a door closing; rather, with the right access and right community, they would be “enabled to be blessings and helps … instead of being objects to be looked down upon by their hearing brothers and sisters” (180). She states in the preface that her “design in writing this book was to give the public a fair idea of life in an institution for the deaf and dumb; and to show what has been done, and can still be done, for those deprived of the senses of hearing and speech. I also wish to disabuse the minds of parents who think their deaf-mute children will not be well cared for and receive benefit in these institutions” (ix).
In many ways, this fictionalized memoir presages the accounts of Deaf lives written for hearing parents of deaf children by some 100 years. Farlow was an early advocate of residential schools, along with what was then called “the sign method” and Deaf community life and letters, and her support is evident in her depiction of the signing deaf children and teens in this work. She gives advice that will feel quite familiar to contemporary readers. For example, she is aware of the impact of what we now call language deprivation and the sensitive period of language acquisition.
In addition to advocating for accessible education through the description of daily life at a thriving residential school, Farlow provides detailed descriptions of mid-to-late nineteenth-century American Sign Language and gestures that will prove of interest to sign language linguists, anthropologists, educators, and historians. Farlow’s descriptions of buildings, landscapes, and rooms also provide a great deal of period detail for historians and architects. There are even some hints of ideas that foreshadow “Deaf Space” by some 125+ years. Descriptions of Deaf games and ASL story nights are also included, and Deaf Studies scholars and students will likely find the description of white Deaf residential school life and gender-segregated activities and spaces to be revealing.
After graduating in 1875 from the Indiana Asylum for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb—as it was then called—Farlow went on to become a teacher at the Iowa School for the Deaf in 1880. She spent at least three years there and then left Iowa for Cheney, Kansas, where she was active in the Deaf community. Around 1896, Farlow relocated to Ohio to live with her parents on a farm.1 In 1899, The Silent Worker noted that Farlow had written a manuscript called Prisoner of Silence and that she needed a specific number of “subscriptions” to underwrite the publication of this piece. This manuscript has not been located, nor does it seem to have been published. The Farlow family moved to Michigan, where Farlow became a caretaker for the girls at the Michigan School for the Deaf in 1902.2 By this time, she had become a regular correspondent to the Little Paper Family’s Ohio Chronicle, the newspaper published by the Ohio School for the Deaf.
Farlow wrote poetry and short, newsy, pieces in The Ohio Chronicle about personal, family, and community life.3 Over the years, she described increasing difficulties with her health, her eyesight, and work. At one point in 1907, after suffering what she calls “dropsical heart disease” and near-blindness, she went to Philadelphia to sell hosiery door-to-door.4 Around this time, Farlow wrote and attempted to publish another book, In Still Ways; however, she was defrauded by the company that bought the rights to this book. She paid out a sum of $50 (possibly to buy back the rights), which she never recovered, but she resolutely noted in her “Michigan Letter” in 1907 that she paid off the debt by selling “stereoscopic views.” As far as can be determined, In Still Ways never was published.5
Farlow was a devout Christian and this sensibility pervades much of her published work and her choice of publisher—Christian Publishing House in Dayton, Ohio. Readers interested in religion in the Deaf community and in the teaching of religious history at deaf schools will find much in her memoir that provides insight into how Christian practices infused the curriculum and everyday life in nineteenth-century Midwestern Deaf schools like this one. Farlow’s faith is evident in a poem she wrote in 1904 in The Ohio Chronicle as an homage to Gallaudet.
THE DEAF—PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
Down the dim aisles of the past
We turn our gaze to-day;
But shapes of gloom like shadows cast
Obscure that far-off way….
But, lo! A ray of light illumes…
Forward into the future we gaze
With souls by high ambitions fired;
Be this our song through coming days,
Praise God, who hath all good inspired.
… … … … … … … … … … … .6
Farlow continued to publish her observations of quotidian life in her “Michigan Letters,” a regular column in The Ohio Chronicle. Her notes on Midwestern weather, farming life, responses to letters reprinted in the paper, and the small dramas of family and community events have a casual, epistolary style that contrasts with the dramatic rhetoric of her poetry and, occasionally, her narrative in Silent Life and Silent Language.
Nineteenth-century technology, transportation, and events play minor yet memorable roles in this manuscript. Chapter 20, “The Magic Lantern Entertainment,” recounts a Saturday night magic lantern exhibition at the school. This chapter has been reprinted in a blog on the history of public entertainment and photography.7 In chapter 26, Farlow tells the story of the accidental deaths of two residential school boys who did not hear an oncoming train. In keeping with historical accounts of life in the aftermath of the Civil War, this book contains descriptions of the somewhat sentimentalized military play-acting performed by the boys of the school, as well as military metaphors to describe sudden summer storms (see pp. 74, 75, 108).
Despite being set in Indiana in the years after the Civil War, there is little to no mention of the larger political and historical environment. Farlow was born in 1854, so she presumably had some idea of such large-scale national events. Because this book is a nostalgic memoir, it is possible that this lack of explicit connection to the larger society is a function of genre and the author’s purpose. Further work on Farlow’s literary context and influences and biography may shed some light on this question.
As an aspiring author of additional manuscripts, Kate Farlow seems to have found—like her heroine, Carrie Raymond—that “the romantic dream of her school days proved to be but a castle in the air, which, by and by, tumbled down; but strange to say, she did not mourn over its fall” (184). Even though Farlow was deeply affected by being defrauded by the publisher of her second book, and spoke of this disappointment until her death in 1909, she, like Carrie Raymond, seems to have carried on with resolute and “hearty” determination (39).
Kate Farlow died after an “illness of a few weeks” on April 18, 1909, at the age of 54, near Lamb, Michigan.8 Her last piece in The Ohio Chronicle, published less than one month before she died, was a fond and humorous poem, “The Neighborhood Baby,” and it ends with a figurative wink to the reader over a toddler’s sudden discovery that a new baby “sisser” has dethroned him from his status as the cherished neighborhood baby. In a cameo appearance, Farlow seems to include herself in this poem.
There Kate he finds to whom they speak
In voiceless way when an answer they seek;
So he wiggles his fingers at her too,
What does he say—who knows? Do you?9
A determined observer of seemingly “silenced” experiences and overlooked lives and languages, Farlow provides a fascinating and revealing glimpse into mid-to-late nineteenth-century deaf school life and learning.
Notes
1. “City News,” Evening News (Indianapolis, IN), June 29, 1875, 2; “Institution Items,” American Annals of the Deaf 25, no. 4 (1880): 290; “Among the Alumni,” Ohio Chronicle, May 22, 1909, 2; “Sun-flower State News,” Deaf Mute’s Journal, October 15, 1891, 4; “Ex-Pupils’ Column,” Ohio Chronicle, March 7, 1896, 2; “Home News,” Ohio Chronicle, March 19, 1898, 3.
2. “Prisoner of Silence,” Silent Worker, September 1899, 8; “Among Sister Schools,” Ohio Chronicle, October 9, 1902, 2.
3. See, for example, Kate Farlow, “Deaf, Dumb, and Blind,” Ohio Chronicle, February 23, 1901, 1; “Washington (Tune, America),” Ohio Chronicle, February 16, 1901, 1.
4. Kate Farlow, “From Kate Farlow,” Ohio Chronicle, June 1, 1907, 1.
5. Kate Farlow, “Michigan Letter,” Ohio Chronicle, October 9, 1907, 1.
6. “The Deaf—Past, Present, and Future,” Ohio Chronicle, October 1, 1904, 1.
7. Luke McKernan, “Silent Life and Silent Language,” Picturegoing: Eyewitness Accounts of Viewing Pictures, (blog), April 12, 2015, http://picturegoing.com/?p=4026.
8. “Obituaries,” Herald of Gospel Liberty (Dayton, OH), May 13, 1909, 606.
9. “The Neighborhood Baby,” Ohio Chronicle, March 27, 1909, 1.
*Numbers in parentheses refer to pages in this volume.