Where the 'safe hand' comes from

[Meg]

I know there is an older thread (safe hands), but I didn't do thread-necromancy this time.

This theory isn't about the meaning of the safe hand but where (at least partly) it comes from. I found a quote from Brandon about it:

It's part of what has grown out of the Vorin culture, and there are reasons for it. One of them has to do with a famous book written by an artist who claimed that true feminine pursuits and arts were those that could be performed with one hand,

(source; emphasizes are mine)

Then I ran over Dandos the Oilsworn (on the wiki) and that made me look up the scene in TWoK. Kabsal there describes Dandos Heraldin (what a name!) as "a true master of pencils" but didn't see how Shallan could have had him as master since is was dead for tree hundred years. Shallan told him, that "her father had a book of his instruction." (Side-note: Does this mean he wrote a book? Than writing had not been bad for men 300 years ago?)

So if the artist referred in the above quote is an in-world artist, I think it is Dandos the Oilsworn. Sadly there is nothing more to find about Dandos.

If Brandon refers to an artist in real life, then maybe I made a fool of myself :-).

[hoser he/him]

Nice catch.

If he'd been an ardent, he could have written a book. He could have dictated it, but then the women who actually wrote it would have written who knows what as footnotes.

[Inkthinker]

If he's referring to a real-world artist, he hasn't told me about it. The safe-hand is also an exploration/illustration of how different cultures find different things to be arousing or forbidden. For instance, an Alethi woman touching a man with her safe-hand would be considered pretty damnation forward behavior. Showing someone your fingertips might be a subtle form of flirtation, and so on and so forth.

Safe-hands are not useless. You can grip things through the cloth (though it's probably considered a bit gauche) and most articles of clothing that cover the hand retain a slot through which the hand may emerge if needed, or be reached from outside. If women wear dresses with long and voluminous sleeves, they may sew a pocket inside the sleeve of the safe-hand in which they hold valuables.

I'm trying to remember if Brandon said anything about the use of gloves, but danged if I can recall for sure. It's probably a bit like lingerie.

[dj26792 he/him]

I thought he said something about most peasant women wearing a glove instead of a full extended sleeve, not sure if that was an interview or what, but thats what I remember seeing.

Its in the same comment from a goodreads interview that he talks about the in world artist, Meg linked the interview database, the original interview is here, notably message 22.

[Satsuoni he/him]

The use of gloves was mentioned in the book.

Like all Vorin women, she kept her left hand—her safehand—covered, exposing only her freehand. Common darkeyed women would wear a glove, but a woman of her rank was expected to show more modesty than that. In her case, she kept her safehand covered by the oversized cuff of her left sleeve, which was buttoned closed

The longer left cuff hid her safehand. Kaladin’s mother had always just worn a glove, which seemed far more practical to him.

In Vorin kingdoms, she’d likely be of the first or second nahn. Thaylens had their own system of ranks. At least they weren’t completely pagan—they respected eye color, and the woman wore a glove on her safehand.

One more year, and she’d start wearing a glove on her left hand, the mark that a girl had entered adolescence.

She wore a green glove on her left hand. Covering the safehand was a silly tradition, just a result of Vorin cultural dominance. But it was best to keep up appearances.

In fact, most references to the word "glove" in WoK seem to deal with safehand

Edited February 4, 2013 by Satsuoni

[Inkthinker]

Whup, there you go. I still say that lacy gloves on Roshar are scandalous hot. At least to sufficiently stuffy, conservative Vorin. Regular gloves are probably more like bathing suits, or at least tight jeans.

Pretty sure I'm over-thinking it, though. If I recall properly, Brandon said something to the effect that the concealment of the safehand isn't so much a sexual taboo (like ladies covering their legs) but probably more like the headscarf or wimple, which is more about propriety and devotion and respect and a bunch of old traditions drenched in a couple thousand years of continuity. In that sense, revealing your safehand to someone isn't so much an erotic act as an act of intimacy and trust. In that sense it might be a prelude to romance, much like a woman uncovering her hair, but in and of itself it is not about sexuality.

Anyhow, the description of Shallan's initial dress is based on the concept art I think, and in that the sleeves are similar to a kimono. The left sleeve should be long enough that if the arm and the hand are fully extended, the sleeve stops about an inch from the furthest fingertip. The sleeve buttons up at the mouth, but you can either reach between the buttons or undo it in order to reach down into the sleeve or expose the hand.

I had a couple ideas about the right-hand sleeve, I don't know if we every came to a consistent conclusion about whether it was cut shorter, or cut the same length but fastened back to let the right hand be free (the left sleeve could fasten back as well, but good girls wouldn't dare think of it). If I had to choose, I'd do the latter (equal cuts, one fastened and one open). On Shallan's dress, the right sleeve can be opened up to the elbow

Edited February 4, 2013 by Inkthinker

[Meg]

Please don't feel offended but I can't help myself to smile broadly. I intentionally picked only this few words for my quote and again on purpose I didn't add any thoughts or theories about the "why".

Actually I'm curious about the idea behind the safe hand too and enjoyed your informations. Not that I have no thoughts :-). So I think that the pristine intention at first was to 'safe the left hand' (as to protect (protect from what?)) and the development of larger sleeves respectively wearing a glove came later (and was a development throughout the different paths from noble or peasant women). Maybe it has to do something with 'working' as for a noble woman don't have/had to do some hard labor (working on a field with that sleeve would be unpractical for example). And, too, I think the Vorin leaders only picked this idea and pushed it (as for we see that female ardents don't have to 'safe' their left hand).

Oh yes, there's a lot of ideas rumbling around in my brain.

[Inkthinker]

I'm not sure why anyone would be offended?

One of the very most fun parts of my job is extrapolating from the ideas Brandon gives me for the concept work. Most of it he either counters outright, or at best leaves it on the table, maybe it'll be useful some later day but for now it is neither here nor there. Once in a rare while I win one, and that's my day.

[Cheese Ninja he/him]

I'm not sure why anyone would be offended?

One of the very most fun parts of my job is extrapolating from the ideas Brandon gives me for the concept work. Most of it he either counters outright, or at best leaves it on the table, maybe it'll be useful some later day but for now it is neither here nor there. Once in a rare while I win one, and that's my day.

English isn't Meg's first language, so he/she has a few little quirks in their vocabulary. Meg is still much better at English than I am in any language that is not English, so please don't think I'm being critical.

Main Topic: It's an interesting theory overall, and does seem to fit with what Brandon said, but I'm not sure the timeframes match up. Dandos wrote his book at least 300 years ago, which is a pretty long time, but might not be enough time for safehands to have become such a deeply seeded custom among Vorin societies. Then again, fashions in our own world can change quite a bit in a few decades time, and customs from 300 years ago are very different from customs today. It mostly depends on whether their pace of changing customs in Roshar is as pronounced as ours is. It's easy to think of societies in fantasy series as being slow to change with time.

[Meg]

Err, thanks for your warm words, Ninja. I'm as red as a beetroot now, nearly glowing. Really.

Inkthinker, I hoped not to offend anybody when I smiled seeing which path the thread took even with my intentional OP (that didn't include theories about the "what is the safe hand for/about").

Please feel free to go into my expressions if they are mistakeable and also to correct mistakes.

At topic: I have to admit that I'm liable to mess up the timeline (or other things) and sometimes I neither take the book nor look in the wiki to look something up. Both actions normally bring me about getting caught up there :-).

[king of nowhere]

talking with my brother, we came to the conclusion that brandon has a table of numbered random oddities (something like 01 women have to cover the left hand; 02 they can't wear colorful clothes; 03 the profession of people is determined by the order of their birth; ...), and that he assign them to people by rolling dices.

Of course it's not true, but we had some fun imagining him rolling dices with his worlds.

"46: the world will be nice and poeple will be happy. Nonono, I don't like that. let's roll again. I want them to SUFFER! muahahaha!"

[happyman he/him]

"46: the world will be nice and poeple will be happy. Nonono, I don't like that. let's roll again. I want them to SUFFER! muahahaha!" :)/>/>

Anybody who put that on the list should be fired! I only advocate that for the real world. Fictional worlds can suffer.

Edited February 11, 2013 by happyman