Essay Comparing The Shape Of Things And The Birthmark

The Shape of Things and The Birthmark have a lot of similarities and differences. Both pieces of literatures characters focused on a couple. A main character each piece of literature have the common objective of changing human imperfections to become more desirable and in the end, achieve similar results. However the Motives and other aspects differ in both pieces.
The Shape of Things the story is about an graduate student in arts named Evelyn and an English major named Adam, who works at a museum.The two meet at the Museum adam worked in and started a relationship. Evelyn is a beautiful and alluring women who is passionate and dedicated to Art. Evelyn is enigmatic, bold, manipulative, cold, and has a unapologetic certainty about who she is and what she does. Adam was as overweight, a below average looking guy who came off as nerdy, socially awkward with no success with women. His few friends include Philip and Philip's finance Jenny. In order to make Evelyn happy he undergoes changes he exercises eats healthier foods, dresses more stylishly, acts more confident and dominant.
The Birthmark main characters include a brilliant intellectual, scientist Aylmer and his wife Georgina, a beautiful passionate woman. Aylmer has been totally and completely committed to his work. His entire life
has been about figuring out the way that nature works, which hindered his personal and social life. He was able to put his work aside in order to marry a beautiful and passionate woman, Georgiana. Georgiana is a loyal passive intelligent woman who can be described as the ideal wife of that time period, willing to do anything to make her husband happy. Georgina passes her time by reading the works of philosophy she finds in her husband’s library. Georgina has a distinctive, small, red birthmark on her cheek in the shape of a tiny hand. The men who pursued her in the past found the birthmark attractive, some catty women said that it messed up an otherwise perfect face. Georgiana has always found it charming.
The Two pieces of literature’s characters have some comparable aspects. Both literary works focused on the relationships between the main characters, where one person in the relationship was dominant and the other was willing to change who they were to make the other happy. The main characters are all intellectuals in the works. Adam is a college english major, Evelyn was going for her masters in art, Aylmer was a scientist and Georgina read philosophy works in her husband's library and his experiment journals. The gender roles are reversed in the shape of things and gender roles are traditional in the Birthmark. In the Birthmark a husband is the dominant one in the relationship and is making his wife change. While in the Shape of Things, Evelyn is the dominant one and makes Adam change. In the shape of things they are intellectuals in the sense of being educated in the Birthmark they are intellectuals in a different sense. Aylmer is constantly experimenting and seeking knowledge while Georgina is self taught and reads Philosophy. In The Shape of Things Evelyn “ sculpted” Adam to become what society considered better. She used systematic manipulation, and suggestion supported by feigned interest with sexual motivation to slowly changed adam under the guise of dates. Slowly changing his morality along the way. First she made him change his diet by making him eat his first vegetarian meal(spinach and mushroom calzone with a salad). Putting him on a workout regime to lose weight. Making him get rid of his glasses and started using contacts. She convinced him to get a nose job “people do it all the time”using pressure lies and sex. Getting rid of habits like nail biting. Made him get rid of a jacket that he loved his friend couldn’t convince him to do and completely changed his style. Used guilt as leverage and gave him an ultimatum her or his friends in order to make Adam separate himself from his friends. After months of manipulation she sculpted Adam. In her own words she made him “cuter stronger more confident”, Adam was refashioned as a person he is more interesting more desirable more normal. Along the way he was more inclined to do the amoral, examples include his increased use of lies, how made a sextape, how he cheated and had relations with his best friend's fiance, became craftier, got a tattoo which was against his religion, started to curse, and more violent ie fighting his friend. At the end Adam ends up alone, hurt and in tears once Evelyn revealed what she was did to him. In the Birthmark Aylmer wanted get rid of his wife’s birthmark, or in his mind her imperfection, to make his wife perfect. He first asks his wife to remove it, his wife is hurt but out of her love for him and desire to make him happy says that she will risk her life to have the birthmark erased. Once his wife gave him her blessing he and his assistant Aminadab got to work. After hours and revisiting his old work of potion that rids freckles he makes a potion that cures geranium of blots. She drinks the potion and falls asleep. Gradually as she sleeps the birthmark disappears. However the birthmark was her “earthly tether” that kept her from heaven and she dies once it’s removed.

The processes of both Evelyn and Aylmer had a similar desired goal. The "sculpting of Adam" and the removal of the birthmark end goal was to make them more desirable.
Both of their desires consumed their life. Evelyn went into a time consuming relationship devoting the majority of her time to "sculpting" Adam. Aylmer cannot stop thinking about removing his wife's birthmark and because of that his everyday life was affected and his marriage became more unhappy. The "subjects" Adam and Georgina were willing to change for the sake of making the other person happy. Adam listened to all of Evelyn's suggestions changing his style and having surgery and Georgina was willing to risk her life to remove her birthmark.Both the "subjects" ended up hurt. Adam ended up broken alone and crying because of what Evelyn did to him and Georgina ended up dying from the birthmark being removed. The difference start with how one was aware of the intended goal. Adam had no idea what Evelyn was doing to him and when he found out he was mortified. Georgina knew that Aylmer was trying to remove the birthmark and consented. Evelyn's "sculpting" was all encompassing trying to change not just appearance but habits personality style and behavior. Aylmer experiment only wanted to rid his wife of her birthmark. The biggest difference between the two processes was they methods of which they used. Evelyn uses manipulation lies and suggestions to gradually change Adam. Aylmer uses science to immediately get rid of his wife's Birthmark. The motive Evelyn had was for her MFA thesis project that her graduate adviser instructed her to change the world. She chose however to change "someone's world". Her method of Changing someone’s world was to instill X amount of change into Adam only through manipulation. She had full knowledge what she was doing to Adam and didn’t care. In her own word she didn’t do this out of love or concern she did this strictly for the sake of her project.
The motive Aylmer had was to better his wife my getting rid of her imperfection the birthmark. To Aylmer the birthmark symbolizes mortality and sin and comes to tower over Georgiana’s beauty in his mind. To remove the birthmark it would mean he would have beat mortality and nature, while making his wife perfect. He had no idea of the repercussions of what removing the birthmark would do to his wife and would never have done it if he knew. Despite being misguided his reason for doing this is love his desire to make his wife into something perfect.
The motives between the two leads in the shape of things and the Birthmark highlights how Aylmer and Evelyn are different and a difference between the story’s.
At it’s core The Birthmark is about a man trying to better his wife and tragically, while at it’s core The shape of things is about a woman sick twisted project that changes and ruins a man. Aylmer is a man with a god complex but he honestly believes he can beat nature. Aylmer cared about his wife unlike Evelyn who had no regard of Adam. Evelyn will do anything to meet her goal, she is a woman who has no morals because their is no morality in art, she is cold uncaring and the only thing she cares/passionate about is
art.
The Shape of Things and The Birthmark are two very comparable piece of literatures. The main characters are smart and in relationships, with the dominant one changing the other and the others going along to make them happy. Both leads became obsessed with the goal and overcame their lives and the ones changed both dealt with a negative aftermath. However the stories are not the same at the motivations and the ignorance of Adam are the main things that separate these two pieces of literatures.