Essay On Magic And Science In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Birthmark

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birth Mark” is very heavy on science. The main character, Aylmer, is a scientist; the first line of the story is, “In the latter part of the last century, there lived a man of science,” (14). There is no clear delineation between magic and science though, creating a very eerie and superstitious mood as the story progresses and Aylmer falls deeper into his obsession over Georgiana’s birthmark. The text says he was “confident in his science, and felt he could draw a magic circle round her within no evil might intrude” (20). The word science is used to describe illusion, evil, magic, as well as the physical manipulation of another person through surgery or alchemy. Aylmer creates illusions that make him seem like he “held sway over the spiritual world,“ and it’s said that those illusions are
The story begins with the coroner asking questions about the events that led up to his death. “The witness was sworn. ‘What is your name? the coroner asked…Age?” (40). This systematic approach to looking at the chain of event and the evidence present on the corpse is more like the way we approach science now. When Bierce describes the body he says, “there were dreadful lacerations: the skin was torn in strips and shreds,” which seems very clinical and straight to the facts, the way a coroner might describe a corpse’s wounds, without emotion (43). Because everyone is seemingly rational and sane, it makes the story seem that much more far out when we learn about the actual events. At the end, when the reader gets a glimpse into what was actually happening, Hugh, the dead man, describes sound and color in his journal in a very scientific, fact-filled, and straight forward way: “at each end of the solar spectrum the chemist can detect the presence of what are known as “ectinic” rays… there are colors we cannot see… the Damned Thing is of such a color!”