An unhappy and utterly pitiable creature? Life and self-images of deaf people in the Netherlands at the time of the founding fathers of deaf education.

This article describes how young deaf people in the Netherlands between 1809 and 1828 made the transition from living in a school for the Deaf,1 a rather protected community with mostly deaf people and with hearing people who could understand them rather well, to a life in hearing society with mostly hearing people who knew little about deafness. How did they manage to live in that hearing society? The article describes how these deaf people viewed themselves as Deaf persons in a hearing society. The description is based on an analysis of 73 letters written by 35 ex-pupils to the founder of their school, Reverend H. D. Guyot. As it turns out, these deaf ex-pupils managed to live in hearing society remarkably well.