Symbolism: The Hand By Gabrielle Colette

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Symbolism Essay “The Hand” In the short story “The Hand” the author uses the description of one's hand to describe a lack of power. The author Gabrielle Colette uses the shifting description of the hand from the beginning to the end of the story as a symbol for the powerlessness that the young girl has in her marriage. As the story begins the young couple lay in bed together “asleep”, however, the newly wedded wife lay awake in astonishment filtering through thoughts about her new life. It is clear that the wife holds a lack of authority in the couple's relationship, as she “tightened her left arm around her husband's neck with the charming authority exercised by weak creatures (Collette 1).” She does this in a very innocent way just as a child may try and tell an adult what to do. As she continues to closely examine her husband she begins to notice his hands and she refers to them as having “powerful knuckles and the veins engorged by the pressure from the arm(Collette 1).” In this quote her examination of her husband's hand is a symbol of the power that he holds. Even though the hand is lying so innocently in the bed the author's …show more content…

Things that she is shocked to learn about as she says, “...And I've kissed that hand!... How horrible! (Collette 2).” As her husband is simply twitching or having a bad dream the wife refers to the hand as “shaken by faint jerks which resembled some sort of agony (Collette 2).” The exaggeration of the hand allows the reader to understand how shocked the women is to discover a flaw in her husband. Even though she had just experienced this bizarre event the women realizes that she has made a permanent decision to be with her husband. As the hand “relieved of its burden, became a protective belt (Collette 2).” The wife settles back into bed protected by her husband's hand as she has accepted the flaws in him which demonstrates her lack of

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