My favorite short story in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio–one of my favorite stories ever–is titled “Hands.” The protagonist, Wing Biddlebaum, is a social outcast in a small town populated with misfits. Awkward and inarticulate, Wing talks with his hands, which are delicate and nervous: he owes his nickname, in fact, to their quirky fluttering. Wing, it seems, can’t quite control his hands: when he gets upset, he pounds them on any available surface, and when he’s nervous, he runs them through his hair.
Wing, however, is a gentle man who doesn’t get upset much. When he was young, readers learn, Wing Biddlebaum lived in Pennsylvania and was a teacher. In that previous lifetime, he used his hands to show affection toward his students, touching and caressing them as he strove to teach them:
Here and there went his hands, caressing the shoulders of the boys, playing about the tousled heads. As he talked his voice became soft and musical. There was a caress in that also. In a way the voice and the hands, the stroking of the shoulders and the touching of the hair were a part of the schoolmaster’s effort to carry a dream into the young minds. By the caress that was in his fingers he expressed himself. He was one of those men in whom the force that creates life is diffused, not centralized. Under the caress of his hands doubt and disbelief went out of the minds of the boys and they began also to dream.
You can see, I’m sure, where this story is headed. Male teachers aren’t supposed to caress their students, and there were rumors and accusations. The man who became Wing Biddlebaum left Pennsylvania in disgrace, arriving in Winesburg, Ohio to serve a kind of exile, changing his name and abandoning his career. The man who once used his hands to inspire young minds ends up living on the outskirts of town, alone and misunderstood. Is the man known as Wing Biddlebaum a poet or a pedophile, an idealist or a predator? Sherwood Anderson never says, leaving Wing’s story open to interpretation. In the story’s final scene, Wing is alone in his empty house, picking breadcrumbs from his kitchen floor with his deft fingers: “The nervous expressive fingers, flashing in and out of the light, might well have been mistaken for the fingers of the devotee going swiftly through decade after decade of his rosary.”
Our hands say so much, it’s no wonder chiromancers use them to foresee the future. One man’s hands are calloused and worn, with dirt under the nails; another’s are delicate and thin-skinned, with long, elegant fingers. When I myself was a student, I’d regularly spend class lectures watching my teachers’ hands, watching as they underscored important points through gestures and gesticulations. Try as I might, I can’t stop myself from talking with my hands: once one of my high school teachers, in fact, approached me in the hallway between classes, clasped my hands in his, and dared me to say something–anything–while they were immobilized. And indeed, all I could do was laugh, speechless, while the wings of my hands lay helplessly pinioned: a teenage Wing Biddlebaum without a voice.
This is my contribution to today’s Photo Friday theme, Hands. Today’s pictures come a from a window-shopping trip at Boston’s Copley Plaza and Prudential Center last December. Enjoy!
Nov 26, 2010 at 6:41 pm
I always loved that story, too, though I loved almost everything in Winesburg, Ohio.
I wonder what those manequin’s hands could teach us?
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Nov 26, 2010 at 9:36 pm
I love your images of hands, so different from any mannequins that I’ve seen! I’m also fascinated by hands, all the things they do, pictographs of hands made by hands, photos of young and old hands and so on. I’m not familiar with the story so must find it and read it, thanks Lorianne!
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Nov 26, 2010 at 9:41 pm
Oh, I see you have the link to the story! Thanks again – will read it!
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Nov 27, 2010 at 11:04 am
Loren, I love what Anderson does in Winesburg, just as I love what James Joyce does in Dubliners. If I were ever to write a novel, I think I’d follow their lead by writing an interconnected series of short stories. I love how the Winesburg stories stand alone as independent tales, but they built narrative momentum if you read them together. The effect is quite remarkable.
I’m a big fan of mannequins, as long-time readers of this blog know! I think their hands are the most interesting, especially given the lack of expressions on their faces.
Marja-Leena, I think you’ll like the Sherwood Anderson story. When I looked for a photo to post on this theme, I was actually amazed I don’t have more photos of hands, given how fascinating I find them. These particular mannequins were particularly interesting as they were constructed from folded reinforced plastic, like those plastic bins they use at the Post Office. I’d never seen mannequins like them before!
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Nov 27, 2010 at 2:23 pm
Excellent post and pictures, Lorianne. I too am fascinated by hands. Talking with one’s hands is such a familiar sight in non Anglo-Saxon cultures that those of us who grew up using and seeing hands as part of speech find it odd that this seems unusual, sometimes even eyebrow-raising, in other places. By the way, there are some wonderful pictures of hand-gestures used in Indian dance. And no doubt some videos on YouTube of hand-speaking in Italy, France, Spain etc.
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Nov 13, 2011 at 11:52 pm
Admirable blog..
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