ENG 113
Instructor Risch
“The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Donna Stevens
Journal 5
January 14, 2011
This story is an early version of our obsession with physical perfection. Aylmer knows that she can be made perfect in his eyes at least temporarily if he could only remove the birthmark from Georgiana’s face. He has been relatively unsuccessful in his lab experiments, but he is determined to experiment on his wife no matter what the outcome may be for her. He is willing to remove that birthmark at all cost to her. In fact, he does not inform Georgiana fully of the risk that she is taking by letting him try for “perfection”. As Aylmer’s nagging about the birthmark drones on, Georgiana is convinced that it truly is ugly. Even though Georgiana has had many men to show her attention before Aylmer, she only cares what he thinks because he is her husband. Georgiana puts her life in his unskilled hands because she just wants to be perfect in the eyes of the man she loves. Georgiana fails to see herself as a beautiful woman. In her past, Georgiana was told that the mark came from an angel who touched her face after she was born. This is a much sweeter acceptance of the way God made her than Aylmer’s attitude of it must come off even if it kills you. It is in the way that Georgiana succumbs to Aylmer’s desires to experiment on her that this story is most like our obsession with physical perfection today. Today, men see perfection in every type of media. Then, they come home and see their living, breathing and strikingly human wives who bore their children and washed their clothes. Aylmer cannot see his imperfections because he is focused on Georgiana’s. Men today who want wives to look like those in the media cannot see their imperfections because they are focused on the media and not their mirrors. The differences between Aylmer’s time and ours are that Aylmer was very hands-on. Men of today only dream of being able to take their wives into the basement, throw up some drapes, and begin increasing and decreasing her in random areas at their whim. As to the question if Aylmer is evil, no he is not evil. He is very goal oriented, determined and prone to obnoxious bragging. He is not simply a stock version of a mad scientist because he actually left his lab to pursue a woman. He was better-rounded than the average mad scientist. His problem was that he discovered that he loved science and the pursuit of it more than he loved Georgiana. Aylmer can be regarded as an idealist because he had an idea of what perfect beauty was and he believed that he could create it in his lab. The birthmark symbolized the next conquest for Aylmer. It waved at him every time he saw Georgiana. The significance of the hand like shape to Aylmer was that it made him think of a red hand with an “ineludible gripe” like a mark that would be on a corpse instead of on his wife (Meyer 422). He was more afraid of the hand than he was in love with his wife. He thought the hand had some kind of dark power. The significance of the hand to Georgiana before she met Aylmer was that it was something of an unusual sweet handprint from the angels above. Aylmer can be characterized as guilty of the sin of pride because he would take great pride in removing Georgiana’s birthmark even though it killed her to do so. Aminadab is a foil for Aylmer when he said, “if she were my wife, I’d never part with that birthmark” (Meyer 424). In this statement, he shows just how overboard Aylmer is in this experiment. Also, when Aminadab calls Aylmer master, he highlights the fact that Aylmer demands an almost worship type attitude by his assistant. Aminadab still makes the remark about Aylmer going too far even though he calls Aylmer master. The significance of the descriptions of the lab are that the part of the lab that is involved in the really scary risky stuff, Georgiana is not permitted to explore. She only is allowed to see the pretty, comforting side of things. The scary side represents all the secrets that Aylmer is not telling her regarding the risk she is taking. The pretty side represents what Aylmer is willing to tell her, which is very limited and cloaked in secrecy; much like the pretty room is cloaked in draperies. Aylmer’s previous experiments have not gone well at all. Therefore, this presents a foreshadowing of what will happen to Georgiana. As the reader, I did not have much confidence in Aylmer.
The theme of this story is that one can become obsessed with something trivial such as a birthmark and let that obsession consume them until finally they cause destruction to others. Georgiana allowed herself to be consumed by Aylmer’s obsession because she loved him and desired his approval more than she desired to live. The point that is made about what it means to be a human being is that no human is perfect. We will only be made perfect after we accept Christ as our Savior, die and are ascended into heaven. Our heavenly bodies are perfect, our earthy bodies are not. The references to the angels touching her cheek give some illusion that even though she has this red place on her cheek, it is not something evil like Aylmer thinks it is, but rather it is a precious touch from a perfect land. Georgiana is now perfect if she made it into heaven, and the story eludes that she did. Aylmer conducts his experiments in the hope and expectation of achieving a higher good which is getting rid of this thing on her face that has waved at him for the last time even if it kills her. Yet, he cloaks this desire nobly as he explains that he will somehow cure the world of birthmarks. The higher good for Aylmer is self gratification. This is why he is an egotist and not so much a scientist. A scientist would wish to share his findings with the scientific world and would not be so ready to kill his wifely specimen just to rid himself of this visual nuisance. Ultimately, Georgiana is responsible for her own death because she lost sight of common sense. The man was barely successful with his experiments, his lifelong assistant said that he was crazy to do this to her, yet she laid down. Georgiana should have realized that once he removed the birthmark, he would see something else in her or on her that he did not like and again she would put her life on the dusty, smoky table.
