Sandburg sketches a woman institutionalized for a second time in a sanatorium. Her hands are strikingly white, and her outward life seems respectable—married to a manufacturer, she once lectured on Victorian poetry. Yet she has developed a severe compulsion: washing her hands forty-seven times in a day and, in sleep, trying to scrub away imagined stains. The speaker’s tone is detached and clinical, almost reportorial, which makes the scene feel more eerie than emotional. The final image of the head physician touching his chin with a crooked finger creates quiet uncertainty—no cure, no explanation, just a man observing a troubled woman. The mood is restrained, melancholy, and unsettling.
White Hands — Summary
For the second time in a year this lady with the white hands is brought to the west room second floor of a famous sanatorium. Her husband is a cornice manufacturer in an Iowa town and the lady has often read papers on Victorian poets before the local literary club. Yesterday she washed her hands forty seven times during her waking hours and in her sleep moaned restlessly attempting to clean imaginary soiled spots off her hands. Now the head physician touches his chin with a crooked forefinger.