Evolution of The Wife in The Hand

The main character of the short story The Hand by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette is a young, newlywed wife in France in 1924. Though the story only spans a page and a half, her character evolves drastically throughout it, her feelings ranging from bliss to panic, and eventually to an obedient submission. To illustrate, in the very beginning of the story, the wife is shown lying peacefully and happily with her sleeping husband on their bed, admiring her husband’s eyelashes, mouth, and hand. She says to herself simply, “Too happy to sleep” (1). Before she begins to really think about her husband and his dangerous mystery, the wife is so calm and happy that she can’t sleep; a happiness which, after her realization, she may never feel again. 

Later, while admiring her husband, the wife begins to really study the lone hand on the other side of her, seemingly disconnected from his body. She studies it until she sees it jolt and “[take] on a vile, apelike appearance,” turning into an unsettlingly alive being- a sight by which the wife is disgusted and scared: “And I’ve kissed that hand!” she thinks to herself in a panic, “How horrible! Haven’t I ever looked at it?” (2). The hand’s morphing into a monster symbolizes the wife’s realization of the danger and uncertainty in her life as a newlywed, having married a man she barely knows. The words used to describe the hand’s movements, “[squeezing] with the methodical pleasure of a strangler” (2), symbolizes that she’s completely trapped in this marriage, being a woman in 1920s France, having no real power in the relationship. 

By the end, when the wife is faced with the hand once again, her view of it has not changed- it is still hairy and grotesque- but she decides to accept her fate. She “humbly [kisses] the monstrous hand,” showing that she’d “concealed her fear” and “bravely subdued herself” to the power and danger of the husband, his hand, their relationship. Rather than fighting for her comfort and safety, the wife elects to lead a “life of duplicity, resignation, and a lowly, delicate diplomacy” (2). She’s resigned now, choosing to live with this view of the monstrous hand, giving up on any chance of solving her inner conflict. She takes on the stereotypical role of the submissive wife without voicing her discomfort. From blissful tranquility, through immense disgust and fear, the wife evolves into a mental state of everlasting acceptance.

Work Cited

Colette, Sidonie-Gabrielle. "The Hand." Vogue.1972.