‘A Young Virgin of Great Hopes’: Agency, Belonging, and the Display of Deaf Hester Koolaart (1683-1737) and her Speaking in the Republic of Letters and Beyond

Nina Geerdink; Victoria Nyst

doi:10.51769/bmgn-lchr.22182

‘A Young Virgin of Great Hopes’

Agency, Belonging, and the Display of Deaf Hester Koolaart (1683-1737) and her Speaking in the Republic of Letters and Beyond

Author(s)

Nina Geerdink Utrecht University
Victoria Nyst Leiden University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51769/bmgn-lchr.22182

Keywords:

Deaf History, Early Modern Dutch Republic, Republic of Letters, Poetry

Abstract

This article seeks to reconstruct the life and agency of prelingually deaf Hester Koolaart (1683-1737) of Haarlem. In the literature, she is chiefly remembered as the star pupil of the early deaf educator Johann Conrad Ammann (1669-1724), leading to her objectification as a destination for scientific tourism. Beyond this, we know little about her life. By reading eyewitness accounts of scientists ‘against the grain’ and examining poems, letters, and archival records, we piece together an understanding of Koolaart’s agency and lived experience as a deaf woman in the early modern Dutch Republic and Hessen-Kassel (in present-day Germany). Koolaart’s lived experience turns out to be influenced heavily by her speaking abilities, but not necessarily in the positive way it is framed in the ‘miraculous healing’ discourse of contemporary scientists and family members. As we argue, it must have been not because of her fame, but rather due to her class, that she had opportunities to feel a sense of belonging within hearing contexts.

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Author Biographies

Nina Geerdink, Utrecht University

Nina Geerdink is assistant professor of Early Modern Dutch Literature at Utrecht University. She specialises in seventeenth century literature, focusing her research on social poetry, paratexts, authorship, and patronage. She has extensively worked on early modern female authors in the Dutch Republic, including Koolaart’s stepmother Elisabeth Hoofman. Recent publications include ‘Economic Advancement and Reputation Strategies: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Women Writing for Profit’ (Renaissance Studies, 2020) and ‘Printing Privileges for Psalters in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic’ (Early Modern Low Countries, 2024). E-mail: n.geerdink@uu.nl.
Victoria Nyst, Leiden University

Victoria Nyst is associate professor of Linguistics at the Leiden University Center for Linguistics. Her research focuses on contemporary and historical sign languages and gestures of deaf and hearing people in Africa and Europe, including projects on sign language endangerment and documentation, sign language emergence, sign language socialisation in deaf families, and deaf history in the Netherlands. She is working on the project Through the Hands of Signers, which explores the history of sign languages and their deaf communities. Together with Dovenschap, the association representing deaf people in the Netherlands, she is working on a project on Dutch deaf heritage. E-mail: v.a.s.nyst@hum.leidenuniv.nl.

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Published

2026-03-31

Issue

Vol. 141 No. 1 (2026)

Section

Articles

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How to Cite

Geerdink, N., & Nyst, V. (2026). ‘A Young Virgin of Great Hopes’: Agency, Belonging, and the Display of Deaf Hester Koolaart (1683-1737) and her Speaking in the Republic of Letters and Beyond. BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review, 141(1), 4-35. https://doi.org/10.51769/bmgn-lchr.22182