The Birth Mark By Nathaniel Hawthorne Sparknotes

In the story, The Birth-mark, Hawthorne examines the idea on the nature of love and the dynamics of marriage through Georgiana’s unquestionable submission to Aylmer’s wishes. During Hawthorne’s time, wives were expected to obey the will of their husbands. In the context of the story, Georgiana is presented as the “perfect” wife, which is reflected in her physical perfection and the story’s theme concerning the idea of perfection. In the story, when Aylmer questions his wife’s loyalty and trust in him, Georgiana reassures him by stating, “Tell me all the risk we run, and fear not that I shall shrink; for my share in it is far less than your own....but it will be on the same principle that would induce me to take a dose of poison if offered by
In the story, Hawthorne portrays Aylmer as being incapable of fully loving his wife because of his love for science which represents his aspiration to achieve control over divinity. This love for science is the issue that comes into major in conflict with his love for his wife. In the story, “His love for his young wife might prove the stronger of the two; but it could only be by intertwining itself with his love of science, and uniting the strength of the latter to his own” (5). This quote hints that the likely reason that Aylmer wanted to remove Georgiana’s birthmark may not be because of his obsession with perfection but for an opportunity to unite his love for science with his love for Georgiana into a single obsessive project. Granted, she becomes a victim of this love affair with science which proves stronger than his love for her. The love that Aylmer provides to Georgiana is flawed at best. As Aylmer is too infatuated with science to be able to separate his feelings for Georgiana from it. Aylmer’s actions in the story forces readers to condemn him to a life where his wife should not have been involved at