In the beginning of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette's short story, "The Hand," a young bride is lying in bed with her new husband, admiring him while he sleeps. Thinking to herself, she "praised his mouth, full and likable, his skin the color of pink brick, and even his forehead, neither noble nor broad, but still smooth and unwrinkled." The bride also mentions her husbands eyelashes and how she's fascinated at how long they are. Despite his good looks, the man also has a feminine side - his fingernails are manicured and painted pink. Colette mentions some of the man's hobbies, such as tennis and rowing, but never mentions the type of person he is. She is more more enamored with his looks and what he does than who he is as a person. The young girl thinks she is in love with her new husband, but is more in love with the idea of having a husband. The girl is blissfully happy at the beginning of the piece, but that happiness soon turns sour when she makes a gruesome discovery. .
The bride is only an adolescent and cannot possibly know anything about love, and she and her new husband sleep in the same bedroom that the girl had as a child, and the only thing that has changed is the color of the drapes in the window. .
As the girl lies next to her new husband, admiring his features and counting the things he does to make her happy, she notices a flaw. She stares at his hand and finally notices that his thumb and fingers are misshapen. Not able to remove her glance from the horror, she describes them as "a pliant beast, awkwardly bent, shaken by faint jerks which resembled some sort of agony. The flat, cruel nail of the over long thumb glistened." This sickens the girl and she is somewhat repulsed by him now. She exclaims, "And I've kissed that hand!.How horrible! Haven't I ever looked at it?" Even when she wakes up in the morning, the image of the hand is still on her mind.