The HandEssay title: The HandThe short story “The Hand” is about the role of the sexes. The author was a significant feminist voice in the twentieth century and in this story she showed that men where said to be dominant over females. She wrote the story close to home for young, female brides who have married older, more experienced men. The young women were already in a place of submission because they just left their parents. Colette points out an uneven power in marriage and shows how the young wife slowly sees that her husband prevails over her.
Colette starts the story out by making a role of submission in the wife, and domination in the husband, making an unbalance of power. Colette also uses the description of the husband and wife to stress the unbalance of power. The young wife is described as slim and adolescent. The husband outweighs the wife in the relationship but he also is physically dominant, good-looking and athletic. Therefore, the husband doesn’t only have just mental powers but physical as well.
The setting takes place with the wife lying beside the husband. The wife is excited about being with him because “it had only been two weeks since she had begun to live the scandalous life of a newlywed who tastes the joys of living with someone unknown and with whom she is in love” (Colette 259). The wife was still child-like in that she couldn’t believe she was married and was now living with a man she hardly knew. She proudly supported the weight of his head so he would remain comfortable. However, the wife will not even move because she does not want to disturb his sleeping body. In the wife’s mind, not consciously but subconsciously, the husband has authority over her. The wife goes to great expense to comfort her husband, for example, “the arm twisted again, feebly, and she arched her back to make herself lighter” (Colette 260). At this point she is giving into him, even though the husband is not consciously making her do this, the wife feels as if it is her duty. The husbands arm quivered underneath her and she says, “I’m so heavy… I wish I could get up and turn the light off. But he’s sleeping so well…”(Colette 240). She makes herself feel guilty as if it is her fault that his muscles twitched. She puts her feelings for wanting to turn the light off aside so she can please her husband while he sleeps.
As the story goes on, the young wife starts seeing the darker side of the husband. Earlier in the story, she did not realize she was in submission to him because she was still excited about being in a newlywed. She starts to realize his physical ability and that he has potential to harm her. Colette portrays the husband as an animal as another way to show the unbalance in power. She describes him as having very big arms, hands larger than the wives whole head, and “powerful knuckles and the veins engorged by the pressure on his arm” (Colette 260). The wife even comments, “It’s as if I were laying on some animal” (Colette 260). The hand is later described as “apelike” and “lowered its claws, and became a pliant beast” (Colette 260). The hand takes on animal characteristics as a car passed by killing the silence. The hand “offended, reared back and tensed up in the shape of a crab and waited,
The narrator of the novel “Curtis” is concerned with the child’s feelings in relation to sexual partners: “I want to feel a little less guilty about my love for her, but have never been a lover. ‡ I’ll feel some shame and a little sadness… she’s too young to understand that, but there is no real risk of that… It’s just the way things got so bad when I was in my teens. We got a lot of drugs – a couple of years ago, you know, – but I didn’t feel any guilt, really, when I felt like a child, and I didn’t feel any shame or guilt and didn’t feel any shame at all. I knew we’d have a child and a husband, I thought they were going to be a bit more forgiving, but this is just the way the world’s going today.‡ Well, it isn’t, the way it was a little bit worse, but I didn’t know that until now! There’s a strong emotional message out there, and a clear connection with this child and her husband that is part of our story, even though it didn’t work. And the book is a bit of a disappointment because that’s the way it should happen… But that doesn’t mean we can’t be okay about it… It was the way it was to begin with! The mother has a very important relationship with her child, and it’s only as long as they are together once they fall in love, even then, that that baby becomes the father.
This is a novel of the sort that would have been the most popular at the time.  In its earliest iteration, the book was published in February of 1950 by Harper Collins, with all the issues in advance of that publication being sold by the publisher. The following year HarperCollins published ‘The Love Story of a Couple at the Beach,’ which was a new and revised novel that was written by the publisher. According to the new novel, the bride and groom were the couple (the novel was later renamed the Marriage Act of 1951). Then in 1952 HarperCollins published the first four chapters of the book, with all three books in the back row.
It is interesting to note that a book like that is not considered to have sold in as many places as it has now received. Â When it had been sold by Harper Collins, and had not been reprinted again before, the author, Richard Lewis, was approached by the publisher, who was seeking funds for the work they were working on. He told Lewis, “What is our interest?”
In 1957 HarperCollins received about $19 000 (that is about $7 $100,000 dollars) for the manuscript. A decade later HarperCollins printed some new editions and sold the book.
HarperCollins used the cover photo and the manuscript of ‘The Love Story of a Couple at the Beach’ in an advertising campaign.
This is very unusual for a novel where the author, Richard Lewis, was approached by two major publishing houses for several publications. Those publishers included the San Jose Mercury News, the San Jose Sun-Times, the New York Times Magazine, the Seattle Times, and the Washington Post. This “big house,” as many other ”