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Hands | Introduction

First published in the March 1916 issue of Masses, a Chicago literary magazine featuring avant-garde writing, Sherwood Anderson’s ‘‘Hands’’ became the first story in his first and most important collection Winesburg, Ohio. Although he had published two novels already, Anderson had difficulty finding a publisher for his collection. The editor who had published his novels thought the stories were too dark to attract readers. In fact, Winesburg, Ohio sold well and was widely reviewed. Most critics admired the book for its insight and honesty, but others labeled it crude and disgusting.

The stories all featured ‘‘grotesques,’’ or psychologically isolated people who live in the small post-Civil War town of Winesburg. The central character of ‘‘Hands’’ is Wing Biddlebaum, a man who was a schoolteacher in another town until his attentions to his students were misunderstood as being erotic. Now he lives alone in Winesburg, afraid to get close to people for fear his hands will betray him again. The suggestion of sexuality, and particularly of homosexuality, was unusual in 1919, and readers and critics reacted strongly. Nearly all contemporary reviewers compared the book to The Spoon River Anthology, Edgar Lee Masters’ 1915 collection of poems about different figures in a small town. Some said that the two authors depicted similar characters and debated over whose approach to the characters was gloomier.

Anderson often said that he created ‘‘Hands’’ in one sitting in 1915 and never changed a single word. Now that scholars have access to Anderson’s handwritten manuscripts, it is clear that this legend is untrue, that the story reached its final form through a combination of inspiration and careful revision.

Hands Summary

The story opens with a sentence that establishes the setting and the main character: ‘‘Upon the half decayed veranda of a small frame house that stood near the edge of a ravine near the town of Winesburg, Ohio, a fat little old man walked nervously up and down.’’ As he stands alone and looks out over the fields, he sees a wagon full of young people returning home from berry picking. They are laughing and enjoying each other’s company, and one of them yells across to the man, mocking him for his baldness.

The man is Wing Biddlebaum, a loner who is ‘‘forever frightened’’ and who has almost no connection with the people of Winesburg, although he has lived near the town for twenty years. To the townspeople, he is a mystery, someone to ignore or to mock. But Wing has befriended George Willard, the local newspaper reporter, who walks out to Wing’s house occasionally to visit. George is about twenty years old, and Wing, although he looks sixty-five, is about forty. As Wing paces on his porch, he looks down the road, hoping that George will come to talk. When he is not with George, he is alone and afraid. With George, he is confident and talkative, and he is able to express the ideas that he has developed over the lonely years.

Wing’s most striking physical characteristic— the one that gave him his... » Complete Hands Summary