The ‘hand touch’ is the holy grail of romantic tension. Countless videos, edits, essays and replays have dissected  Matthew Macfadyen's iconic hand flex as Mr. Darcy in the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. It is a moment of pure and cinematic unspoken desire—the physical overflow of a man trying, and failing, to contain his feelings. Why wouldn’t we love it?

But centuries before Jane Austen’s polite Regency drawing rooms, Samuel Richardson’s 1740 novel Pamela was doing the most with hands. The difference is that, in Pamela, the electric hand touch isn’t a swoon-worthy moment of longing between a man and a woman. Instead, it isa weapon, a trap, and a physical manifestation of domestic abuse.

In modern period-drama fandoms, there is no greater currency than the hand touch, but the obsession only really started with Pamela. Hands are everywhere in Richardson’s novel. The novel’s namesake protagonist, Pamela, writes letters that form the entirety of the plot She prays, she sews, she maintains clothing, but her hands are also seized, dragged down dark hallways, and offered in a deeply complicated, highly coercive marriage to the master of her household, Mr. B. We think of Mr Darcy’s hand touch as a spark of mutual, restrained desire for Elizabeth, but Mr. B’s touch carries a completely different shade of desire: the desire to control. 

A hand can be used in two ways; giving and receiving. I can use it to give you money, but I can also use it to take what is yours. Right now, I am using my hands to write a draft for this magazine, but I can also use it to pat myself on the back once it's published. But for Richardson’s audience, Pamela’s hand conveys everything in one—both her handwriting and her body. With nothing better to do than manage his estate, Mr. B constantly comments on Pamela's writing: "Why, Pamela, you write a very pretty hand." He is obsessed with her letters and the elegance of her handwriting. Isn’t it fascinating when a woman has a voice? When Mr. B first meets Pamela to recruit her to be his housemaid, he is mesmerised by her hands.

"For my master said, I will take care of you all, my good maidens; and for you, Pamela, (and took me by the hand; yes, he took my hand before them all,) for my dear mother's sake, I will be a friend to you..." 

What Mr. B doesn’t realise during this gentle introduction is that Pamela is already writing gossip about him. For a large chunk of the novel, she is documenting his misdeeds in a format that could ruin his reputation if it ever leaked past the estate walls. Later on in the novel, Mr. B finds this revelation and his faux-chivalry vanishes. Outraged that a servant woman could dare to do such a thing, he snaps that Pamela is “always scribbling; I think she may be better employ’d”. 

If we look back to their initial encounter, Mr. B takes Pamela’s hand gently, touching her in what seems a special moment that none of the other maids receive. How chivalrous he is for singling her out to be at the mercy of his handsome hand, but this is not the last time, or the worst time, that he uses his hand to grab her. 

From that moment on, Mr. B’s hand becomes an instrument of surveillance and terror. He uses it to pick the locks and steal her private diaries, to physically pin her down, and to bar the doors when he traps her inside his summerhouse. Mr Darcy stripping away his glove to hold Elizabeth’s hand is the stripping away of a societal barrier to achieve true, skin-on-skin intimacy. But for Pamela, her clothes and her gloves are her only defense. Mr. B’s hands are constantly tearing at her wardrobe, trying to strip her of the layers that protect her body. For Darcy, touching Elizabeth’s bare hand leaves him exposed, leaving the viewer feeling a touch of excitement; but for Mr. B, touching Pamela leaves her violated.

All of this happens and yet, Pamela gives her hand away to him: in marriage. I’m not here to debate whether Richardson should have written this ending, or if we’re supposed to buy into Pamela’s eventual happily ever after. But what is far more fascinating is how it exposes the sheer, messy complexity of a hand. It is a tool of constant contradiction. The very hand that was bruised, pinned down, and used to write frantic letters of survival is the same hand that eventually signs the marriage contract and holds his in return. A hand can change its function in an instant—it can resist, it can submit, and it can rewrite its own captivity as consent.

Mr Darcy pulls his hand away from Elizabeth’s, because he knows her hand is not his to take. Mr. B, however, never pulls away. Mr. Darcy shows us the beauty and sexual tension of a hand, but Richardson warns us of what else can be done when a hand is used to conquer. A hand can reach out to meet you at a boundary, or it can hold and remind you of who owns you.