Summary Of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Birthmark

Would you die if it meant you could be absolutely flawless? Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts on July 4, 1808. He was a famous American novelist and short story writer. In 1821 Hawthorn was accepted into Bowdoin College where he was elected into Phi Beta Kappa. “The Birthmark”, one of his short stories, was published in March of 1843. During that time science was having many new discoveries. Although, many people were still unfamiliar with science and were doubtful of its importance, it was increasingly more interesting. Many scientists often fell in love with science. Not in the way someone falls in love with a person, but a different sort of love. Often times they would try to manipulate and play with nature. This is no different from how Aylmer, the main character, behaves.
He has recently married his wife, Georgiana.
A birthmark is on her left cheek that he never payed much attention to before, now, however, it bothered him. He becomes so obsessed with it that he convinces Georgiana to let him remove it. She knows that his experiments repeatedly failed. Realizing that getting the mark removed meant an almost certain death for her, Georgiana made the decision that dying was better than living with her unrealistic, perfectionist husband. Aylmer is portrayed as a man of science who is unable to separate his love for science with his love for his wife. He is stubborn and refuses to give up which leads to unfixable consequences. He inaccurately believes that beauty lies in imperfection. Aylmer’s tragic flaw is an inability to accept human failures and grasp the idea that it is nature’s flaws that, ironically, are what make the world so
beautiful. In the story Aylmer is first seen as a genius who has everything a man could ever want. He is a successful scientist with an almost perfect wife. As the story progresses, subtle hints about his true personality are dropped. Aylmer gets in a little argument with his wife about a birthmark on her cheek. He says it “shocks [him], as being the visible mark of earthly imperfection,” (Hawthorne 1). Georgiana is perfect except for one minor blemish. He has gotten so caught up in controlling everything he can that the most basic defect bothers him. The slightest imperfections of the natural world dissatisfy him. Aylmer not only dislikes human flaws, he is scared of them. Facing the fact that perfection is unreachable forces him to deal with the reality that he is not perfect. He often portrays himself as a god-like figure. He tampers with nature just to satisfy this false reality he has conjured. This ‘reality’ has become an obsession for Aylmer. Nothing else seems to matter as much as creating a flawless world, even the lives of those he cares about. Aylmer’s real problem is that “for all his intellectual and spiritual qualities, [he] does not have wisdom,” which will ultimately lead to his downfall (Walsh 260). Furthermore, Aylmer becomes obsessed with removing the birthmark, almost to a point of insanity. Having a dead but perfect wife is more appealing to him than a flawed, living one. He is filled with glee “as… the sole token of human imperfection --faded from her cheek, the parting breath of the now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and… took its heavenward flight,” (Hawthorne 8). He watches his wife die for his own selfishness, and the only thing he feels is delight. Now Aylmer can write down the outcome of his experiment and how successful it was in his journal. Aylmer cannot accept that nature is flawed and that he is unable to fix every little detail. He feels the need to “fix” his wife in order to make her perfect. Aylmer is unable to see the beauty in the world’s flaws. His determination to fix all imperfections ends up killing innocent people, like his wife. This story shows a pessimistic view of what will happen when an individual values science more than human life. Not only does Aylmer lose his wife, but also his humanity.