Both The Hand by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette and The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne give voice to women who, in one form or another, encounter a hand that they originally admire but which all too soon after marriage becomes rep

Both Colette and Hawthorne’s female characters are recently married to man whom they both think they love. For the young wife, her marriage is a change in environment and a dream-like state, though literal reality in this case, to a recently widowed man whose background she does not know. For Georgina, her marriage is to a scientist, well-known for his effective discoveries, and who initially loves her for her “perfect” looks. The young wife realizes through the monstrous hand that she has gotten herself into a bind that she could no longer escape, a marriage where love was not the deciding factor and the deciding factor becomes something she deeply regrets. Georgina becomes well aware of the disgust her husband has for the mark on her face and she suspects that the love that drove him to marry her was slowly losing the battle with the disgust that becomes clearly evident in his reactions upon seeing her face. Both marriages begin to deteriorate and in both cases, a night of deep observation was all it took.

As the young wife has only known her husband for a month, she comes to a realization while staring down at his hand. Her fears pronounce awareness about her husband’s hand: strong and in a disconnect way; it belongs to a man who exercises authority, possibly unjustly and oppressively. Colette’s subtle use of the hand is beyond anatomical: it is the terminal part of the human arm used for holding and grasping, an instrument used for the good of humanity but also used to act out harshly and cruelly. The same theme of domination by a man appears in Hawthorne’s piece. Aylmer’s decision to remove Georgina’s birthmark becomes a solid verdict, one that Georgina cannot deny if she is ever to fully have her husband’s love without his shudders of revulsion. His every reaction triggers her own disgust with her marred face and the need to become perfect for him leads her to make the final decision of drinking the concoction which he mixed to remove her mark from within. Yet this removal of nature’s flaw takes away her humanity and the critical reason was her husband’s forceful—no matter how unintentional—method.  

The linking factor between Colette’s piece and Hawthorne’s piece was a hand that, though initially harmless, became the decisive factor in ultimately failed marriages.