Of the women who have been recovered to the feminist rhetorical canon, few of them are

deaf. The primary reason for this exclusion is that education for the deaf did not become an
established field until the late 1700s. Prior to this, deaf people communicated through signs and
gestures. There were certainly many deaf individuals who learned to read and write, but few that
we know of excelled and gained notoriety for their writing (Panara). The most well-known deaf
writers from the 18th and 19th centuries became deaf after learning language, when they had a
linguistic foundation from which to build and share their knowledge. Although they faced many
obstacles being excluded from hearing society, their talents in writing returned them to the
hearing world, as they realized the power they could weild with the written word..
Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna was one such writer. was born in 1790 in Norwich, England.
Her mother was the daughter of a physician and her father was the rector of a Norwich Anglican
church. An idyllic early childhood turned traumatic after she became deaf at the age of ten and
her father died a few years later. An unhappy marriage and eventual abandonment by her
husband soon followed. But by the early 1830s, Charlotte Elizabeth had established herself as a
prolific writer of industrial fiction (Kestner 193) and for three years in the 1840s both edited
and wrote for the anti-Catholic Watchman and Christian Ladys Magazine, a journal that was
popular not only in England but in the United States as well (Rassmussen 162). While Tonnas
Evangelical writing was the norm of the day, and similar to the Hannah Mores religious tracts
(Rassmussen 162) she was at odds with known Victorian feminist fiction and social justice
writers such as Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Gaskell (Kestner, 193) and Mary Wollstonecraft
(Fryckstedt 45).
Tonnas fictional literature has been criticized for its lack of imagination and her sparse
use of metaphors and symbolic representations. Janssen cites Kova evi and Kanner, who wrote
1

that Tonnas most obvious artistic flaw [is its] total lack of humor (Janssen 336). Tonna,
herself, expressed discomfort with the use of fiction in her novels (Janssen 328) because
fiction ran contradictory to Evangelical beliefs. In spite of this, Tonna used fiction quite
prolifically in her works and has been praised for using her industrial fiction and her unique
methodology of intertwining fact and fiction to compose novels and articles that informed her
middle class female readers about the deplorable factory conditions in Victorian England
(Kestner 194). Her most well-known novel, Helen Fleetwood, an account of the sufferings
endured in factories by a fictional family, was based on legislative papers documenting factory
incidents. When she wrote the Wrongs of Women another account of a fictional family, in 1843,
she provides editorial comment about the factual nature of her narrativesand overtly quotes
from authenticatied reports and eyewitness sources (Janssen 342). But how could Tonna have
accurately used figurative language when she could no longer hear it? Her knowledge was based
on a childs access to conversation and a library of great literary works. From the age of ten
onward, she would no longer be privy to the nuances of spoken conversation. Rather than
viewing her fiction as declining over time, becoming increasingly clumsy and defensive
(Janssen 343) readers might instead marvel at Tonnas ability to manipulate language to meet
her needs. If she could no longer access conversation through social face-to-face settings, she
would access it through print, more specifically, legislative documents. Tonnas outstanding
literaty innovation was her employment of official reports and inquiries as the factual basis for
her stories. She was the first of the social-problem fiction writers to translate the recorded
testimony of witness in parliamentary blue books into dialogue for her novels (Kovacevic and
Kanner 164). Since the early 1980s, Tonna has been recovered as a worthy Victorian writer
whose fervent Evangelical and Millenerian beliefs caused her to be soon forgotten after she

passed away from cancer in 1846. She has been examined through various lenses, all with an
eye toward her efforts to improve living and work conditions for women and children. Her
Personal Recollections has been explored as both an autobiographical account and also a
conversion narrative (Kowaleski and Rassmussen) . Kovacevic and Kanner explored her use of
governmental accounts (Blue Books) to inform readers about deplorable factory conditions.
Janssen looked at how Tonna used both fact and fiction in her journal articles and novels.
Gleadle examined how Tonna compelled upper middle class, conservative, Evangelical, Tory
women to protest factory conditions. Fryekstedt explored how the Christian Ladys Magazine
flourished under Tonnas editorship. Kestner analyzed Tonnas book The Wrongs of Women and
how it led to improved factory conditions. Dzelzainis showed that despite Tonnas often singleviewed religious beliefs, she still made positive impacts in gender ideology. Dzelzainis wrote
a second article about both Tonna and Harriet Martineau, exploring the rhetorical differences
between the Evangelical writer and the outspoken feminist author. This article is of particular
interest because Tonna and Martineau were not only rivals on opposite ends of political and
religious spectrums, there were also both deaf.
How did it happen that two of the most well-known Victorian female writers of their time
were deaf? What was life like for deaf individuals in Victorian England? How did Tonna and
Martineau access communication in a hearing society without the technological communications
advancements that we have today? How did their deafness impact their lives as women,
feminists, and advocates for social change?
We know far more about Martineaus hearing loss than we do Tonna. Martineau herself
wrote both articles and an autobiography about her life dealing with chronic illness and hearing
loss. She had enough hearing to access sound through a hearing horn that was so prominent
3

when she was out in public, it became known as the Martineau horn. As a public figure, she
was also the brunt of negative comments, mostly from men, about her gender and her deafness,
which she managed to take in stride (in public and in her writings, at least).
Of Tonnas deafness, we only know that her loss occurred around the age of ten, and she
blames this on the mercury she received when she became temporarily blind. She says little in
her Personal Recollections beyond the fact that it happened, but elsewhere in her autobiography
she recalls befriending a deaf boy while living in Ireland, and using signed communication in
order to lead him toward religious conversion. Her first husband has also been documented as
having interpreted for her during church services. Tonna succeeded in leading a remarkably
private life for such a writer of such public stories and articles and in fact wrote her Personal
Recollections so that her truth could be known before it was soiled after her death.
Retheorize But Tonna, while private, was not a recluse. She traveled to meet her first
husband and later moved to Ireland to live with his family until she was abandoned. How did
she make her way in the world? By looking at deafness through Martieneaus eyes, and also
those of another late-deafned Victorian (male) writer, John Kitto, and by exploring deaf life in
Victorian England, we might better understand Tonnas rhetorical strategies in constructing
arguments through the use of reports and other government documents. should be examined to
understand how Tonna developed as a thinker and a writer who relied on documentation to
support her articles that called middle class women to social action.
In Harriet Martineau: Gender, Disability, and Liability, Bohrer writes that neither her
deafness nor her gender appears to impede her lifes work (36). Martneau insists that no fact
that I wished to learn or any doctrine I desired to comprehend was ever kept from me (Society
xii as cited in Bohrer 36). Although Bohrer uses this as a positive statement with which to end
4

her article, it is not very truthful. Martineau was isolated by vast amounts of information and
was not at all on equal footing as her hearing peers. In a world without sound, or some sounds,
deaf or hard-of-hearing individuals depend on lipreading, context and visual cues to understand a
speaker. Sounds may look alike, and the concentration required to lipread can be exhausting.
Look away for a few seconds, and one has missed a large chunk of conversation.
Martineau accessed sound by way of an ear trumpet. It was about eighteen inches long
with a bowl-shaped extremity, in which sound is collected and a conical tube, through which it
is conveyed to the ear (Yearling, as cited in Esmail 170). To use this trumpet, or Martineau
Hearing Horn (170) as it came to be called, Martineau would have had to stand not in front but
beside the speaker, who would talk directly into the horn. Thus, she was dependent upon hearing
one person at a time and did not have the advantage of using visual cues because she could not
see the speaker. Martineau saw little embarrassment in what for her was a necessary device, and
felt deaf people needed to overcome their false shame (170) and use the trumpet. Of course,
Martineau could not have understood that that hearing loss can be mild, moderate, severe, and
profound, and tools to measure hearing would not be available until the early 1920s (citation).
Thus, the hearing horn would not have been successful for all deaf users.
Martineaus ear trumpet kept her in the public foray, and men were not kind. She was
called the little deaf woman from Norwich (Bohrer 25) After her passing a writer wrote that
her views of life were not always accurate because in society she heard only what was directly
intended for her, and moreover only what was specially designed to pass down her trumpet
(172). The negative attitude toward deafness was prevalent in Victorian England. Martineau
herself separated herself from those who were born deaf (Martineau became deaf as a teenager)
and communicated through signs. She wrote that they were only able to think abstractly through
5

signs. Deaf children, she wrote, are apt to be proud and vain, and apt to take advantage of the
pity which everybody feels for them(Household 123 as cited in Bohrer 27). By demonstrating
how she used the solitariness that deafness brought to heighten her powers of observation and to
improve her reading abilities, she sought to separate herself from those who were born deaf. She
traveled abroad extensively and communicated, from her perspective, with whomever she chose
(24) In spite of her criticisms, In her Letter to the Deaf, Martineau saw herself as a
representative of the deaf community (Stigma 24 as cited in Bohrer 28), a religious military
leader who calls her presumed readers sufferers (Bohrer 28) and urges them to stand up to
our enemy. Even when she wrote about social issues, Martineau could not win, facing criticism
because she sought to place herself within the patriarchal world of politics, even when she
argued in favor of popular beliefs of the day (Bohrer 32).
Kitto, too, sought to find a place for himself as a late-deafened teenager in Victorian
England. Deafened after a fall when he was fourteen, he entered a workhouse for a few years,
then left to travel as a missionary. He articles became a short serial in the 1833 Penny Magazine
called the Deaf Traveler (Bar-Yosef 133) and were later canceled because he focused more on
the travels of a typical hearing man than on his deafness. Kitto later wrote poetry, while at the
same time claiming that deaf people could not write poetry because they lacked the sense to hear
the rhthym and tone in conversation and voices.
For a fewe years after he became deaf, Kitto wrote that he refused to speak (140) and
seldom uttered five words in the course of a week for several years. I always said the little I
had to say in writing (Kitto 310 as cited in Bar-Yosef 140). Although Kitto eventually began to
use speech regularly, he depended on others to communicate with him through wrwitten word on

finger-alphabet (Bar-Yosef 140). Unlike Martineau and Kitto, Tonna never used her deafness
to elicit attention and further her causes.
Formal Deaf education in England began between 1620 and 1640 with a school for
students from affluent families, run by Thomas Braidwood (BSL Zone). He had no established
signed language and instead used a combination of speech and the signs taught to him by the
students. His school was said to have been successful, and one student became a Minister of
Parliament. Braidwood protected his methods, and was at odds with other prominent teachers
of the deaf in Spain and Germany. Tonna became deaf in 1800 during what was known, both in
England and the United States, as the golden age of sign language in deaf education. It is
possible she may have learned for a time at the institution because we known through her
Personal Recollections that she used finger speech to talk to a deaf child. Tonna was younger
than both Martineau and Kitto at the time of her deafness and would have benefited from an
education that combined both speech and signs, what is today called Total Communication.
What are some difficulties that come with sudden deafness? Psychologists have explored
changes in physical health through theories of well-being. One such theory, the adaptation
theory (

) suggests that when individuals have a strong sense of identity before their physical

change, in this case, a well-developed hearing identity, they would experience a sense of loss
after the onset of deafness, but then adapt and adjust to their new identity. There are arguments
that this theory is too broad and discounts environment, support, age, the persons original
mental health and resiliency, and the age at which the change occurred. They have found that
most individuals do not return to the same levels of well-being before the loss occurred. The
authors note changes occurring after the age of twelve are most disturbing to well-being.

Tonnas loss occurred around ten years of age, so she might have had a better adjustment period,
and this could account for her willingness to learn a visual communications method.
The Well-Being of Women Who Are Late Deafened

The authors also write that making the effort to learn lip reading and signed
communication enhance ones ability adjust to their newfound deafness. The authors note that
late-deafened adults are more likely to experience loss, depression, guilt, helplessness, and
isolation, although Tonna, having lost her hearing before she became a teenager, may still have
adjusted more quickly.
There is much to be found in Personal Recollections that identify Tonna as a deaf person,
however, Rasmussen observes that Tonna called her autobiography the Life of Charlotte
Elizabeth, not the Life of Charlotte Tonna. By using her pen name, which she adapted to
protect her finances after her first husband separated from her (

) she fashions her

autobiography as fact mingled with fiction, a methodology she used in much of her writing.
Tonna had a clear methodology and strategy in her writing. She relied on documentation
and written direct testimonies (203), she stated that she did not write fiction, when , in fact, she
did. She used facts for shock value (201) She was consistent in using her writing to
encourage women to influence their male partners in order to succeed in legislative reform (201202). And she framed most of her writing around her Protestant, Evangelical, and Millenariasm
beliefs (Kestner 200).
In Personal Recollections, Tonna recalls discovering, and becoming fascinated with, The
Merchant of Venice when she was seven years old (24). When she became deaf three years later,
she writes, shut out by this last dispensation from my two delightful resources, music and
8

conversation, I took refuge in books with tenfold avidity (26). She read poetry and she says,
read aloud to her mother, the seven mortal volumes of Sir Charles Grandison (26). Because
Tonna refers to the act of reading aloud an affliction (26), it is possible she was ordered to do
so in order to retain speech intelligibility. Tonna recalls growing up with extensive access to
language and conversation beyond her years. When she was five or six, she recalls listening to
discussions of public affairs between her father and visitors affiliated with the church and college
(46). Tonna held her grandmother, with whom she lost contact before she was ten, her fathers
mother, in high esteem, and from her she likely acquired her recognition that she could live
independently. Her grandmother refused to follow the dress and hair fashions of the day,
wearing loose clothing and maintaining hair untouched by curling irons and powder-puff (70).
Her grandmother, a Protestant and a Tory, likely helped develop Tonnas life-long religious
beliefs and practices. From her Tonna learned about supporting her statements with evidence, as
her grandmother brought her Bible forward in support of every opinion that she uttered (71).
From her grandmother Tonna developed her free spirited personality, confessing she was little
help to her mother with housekeeping and needleword (72).
The affect of Tonnas deafness on her and her family should not be underestimated. She
writes, From the period of my loss of hearing, music had been wholly banished; my father
seemed to lose all relish for what could no longer minister enjoyment to me, and deeply I felt the
force of that affection which could so instantly and wholly overcome the ruling passion of his
mind, accompanied as it was by such exquisite skill in that delightful science as rendered him the
admiration of all who came within its influence (73). And so his passing due to a stroke when
Tonna was in her late teens must have led to more trauma in Tonnas life, although she does not
admit to feeling exceptionally grieved in her recollections. Upon his death, knowing that she and
9

her mother had been left with enough to be financially sustained, Tonna resolved to make living
as a novel-writer (73). Tonna would not fulfill her career aspirations right away, as shortly after
her fathers passing she was introduced to the man who would become her husband six months
later (73).
At this point in her Personal Recollections, Tonna chooses not to discuss her married life
and instead speaks of waiting for her religious conversion and the trials that she still had to
endure before this came to pass (74). Tonna spend a period of time at sea, traveling to Nova
Skotia to live her husband, then to Ireland to live with his family. She writes that she spent most
of her time regardless of the weather, sitting on the deck, often strapped in so she would not fall
out. While Tonna claims to have savored the voyage (75), it is reasonable to assume she may
have felt anxieties toward remaining inside. For a deaf person with no access to communication
in a dark expanse of water, being outside and watching the movement of the ship and the skies
would have provided Tonna with a certain amount of control so that she did not feel trapped.
Tonna devotes nearly ten pages of her recollections to her voyages, as if the trip was her turning
point toward her both her conversion and her independence. The narrative becomes a fictional
account of a potentially fateful trip. Tonna writes in first person, The captain openly declared
we were bound for the bottomin the midst of all this I was reported missing (82). She
recounts a conversation between herself and a shipmate that could not have taken place without
pencil and paper, and at last confesses what might have been her true feelings: The act of dying
had always great terrors for me, until, through adverse circumstances, I seemed to have nothing
worth living for, and then I could laugh at it in my own heart (84).
Tonnas trip to Ireland solidified her conversion, and the trip itself from England to
Ireland begins not only with a hopeful note but also with recognition of her deafness, as she
10

meets a traveler who communicates with her through writing, He took pencil and paper, and
with a glow of benevolent feeling expressed his anxious desire to take the same care of me as he
would his own daughter (99). The next acquaintance she met for the second length of her trip
into Ireland also communicated with her through written word, he volunteered to hand mea
note of every remarkable place we should approach during the rest of the journey (100).
Tonna experienced a religious awakening in Ireland, that drove her not only toward
Evangelical Protestantiasm but also toward her life passion of writing about and trying to solve
social injustices. Tonna secured work researching documents for a lawyer, and witnessed poor
families being removed with their belongings and cast out from their poor dwellings. Tonna
writes that this horrified me beyond measure (110). It was then that I came to the resolution
of being a perfect devotee in religion (111).
Tonnas talent for communication must have been exceptional. During her years in
Ireland she lived a solitary life writing for lawyers. Tonna did not have to communicate faceto-face. All of her contact was through documents (126), and through this she would have honed
her skills supporting her beliefs with evidence. She began to write religious tracts to be
distributed to poor Iris citizens (127). Tonna also befriended a deaf boy and his hearing teenage
brother. Tonna and the hearing sibling were able to converse through finger language (148).
Tonnas interest in both boys was to provide religious instruction, but in doing so, she established
a sincere friendship, and because the hearing brother, Pat, fingerspelled in the same manner in
which he spoke, she had access to a spoken language, Irish brogue, that was previously
untenable (149) and would help her compose conversations for her fictional characters in her
later social fiction.

11

Tonnas years writing religious tracts and books in Ireland educated her for her future
audience of women who had never read political essays. By writing tracts for lower language
readers, Tonna learned to form a style of such homely simplicity that if, on reading a
manuscript to a child of five years old, I found there was a single sentence or word above his
comprehension, it was instantly corrected to suit that lowly standard (168).
The difference between Martineau and Tonna in their perceptions of children who were
born deaf shows their different personalities. Both saw themselves and more privileged and
knowledgeable, having become deafened after learning speech, but where Martineau saw herself
as their savior, Tonna saw herself as a teacher. Where Martineau saw vainity because she
assumed they lacked the capacity to think beyond broad signs, Tonna instead felt a religious
calling, and since she knew finger language she was able to help Jack in becoming literate
(184). When finger language and gestures did not suffice, Tonna drew pictures. She was open to
any method to improve communication (186).
In 1824 Tonna returned to England with Jack in tow, at the urging of his parents,
according to her Personal Recollections (197-198).

He lived with her and her brothers family

until his passing in 1831 (334). Lived in Ireland for 5. 5 years (207).
As Tonna moves toward writing about politics and the inequities of women, she explains,
subtly, why she uses documents to support her arguments. In doing so, she inconspicuously
alludes to how she compensates for her deafness. Tonna writes that she never spoke to any
clergyman before she wrote her opinions, basing them instead on "their published writings,
because in conversation,much may be explained away, and those explanations either forgotten
or denied (348-349). Tonna continued to administer to the Iris poor in London, and in 1934
began editing her first Protestant magazine (351). In 1835 Tonna writes that she attended a
12

meeting in London regarding the famine in Ireland (356). Tonna does not explain how she
accessed the language of the speeches at the meeting, but we might assume she gained access to
their written documents. It is also possible, that Tonna brought with her an acquaintance who
either wrote the proceedings for her or who knew finger language and interpreted. Tonnas
Personal Recollections end in 1837, before she took over editorship of Christian Ladys
Magazine, before she embarked on her crusade to improve industrial conditions. Her greatest
literary contributions were only just beginning.
Timeline:
Personal recollections published 1841 but ended 1837
CLM: 1843-1846
Protestant Annual: 1841-1846
Helen Fleetwood: serialized 1839-40 published 1841
Wrongs of Woman 1843
Tonna succeeded in establishing a relationship with her readership without them ever seeing her
(Fryekstedt 44). Tonna preferred to remain out of the limelight and wrote, It is the general
custom in periodical literature, for the Editor to remain altogether veiled from public view (44).

13

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