Interpretation Analysis Evaluation of a Short Story

¶ … Birthmark, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is the story of a man consumed by the pursuit of perfection. He seeks absolute knowledge and absolute control, and imagines that he has discovered great scientific absolutes including the nature of the very heavens and the reason volcanoes erupt. After he marries, he becomes obsessed by a small birthmark on the cheek of his otherwise flawlessly beautiful young wife. His obsession with perfection combined with his scientific hubris leads to the death of his wife. Ironically, in death, the hated birthmark finally fades. The story demonstrates the danger of hubris in assuming that science will have all our answers, that we can manipulate life to meet our arbitrary standards.

Hawthorne demonstrates the protagonist, Aylmer's, obsession through various references. In the opening paragraph he says Aylmer.".. had made experience of a spiritual affinity more attractive than any chemical one. He had left his laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance from the furnace smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers, and persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife." Aylmer is greatly concerned with his own appearance. He scrubs away his only imperfection, something not really part of himself, before proposing to the beautiful Georgina. Hawthorne tells us that Aylmer is so obsessed with science that he is destined to try to combine his love of his wife with his love of science. This marriage takes place through Aylmer's growing obsession over and hatred of a small birthmark on Georgina's cheek.

At first Georgina sees the birthmark as charming, but eventually accepts her husband's judgment that it is abhorrent. Aylmer approaches the topic first by saying that she is "so nearly perfect..." except for the birthmark on her cheek. Aylmer, who had spent his entire life prior to his marriage pursuing great scientific discoveries in his laboratory, is sure he can find a way to remove the blemish from her face, something they are both now obsessed with. Georgina believes in Aylmer's genius and is sure he can erase the now hated mark.

Other references throughout the story emphasize Aylmer's growing obsession with the birthmark. His ego does not allow him to realize that his experiments have all been failures, but when he and Georgina begin to live within an apartment attached to his laboratory, she eventually reads his laboratory notes and realizes that his experiments have been failures. But by this time she hates the birthmark as much as he does, because she knows he cannot really love her until it is gone.

Hawthorne makes sure we understand how Aylmer could be seduced into putting such inordinate faith in science, as he lived during a period or great scientific gains. Electricity had recently been discovered and many other facts about the nature of the world were being proven. Aylmer claims scientific greatness, saying in the beginning of the story that his discoveries were celebrated all over the world, that some scientific discoveries were so amazing they might be considered miracles, and that he might even discover how to create life itself. In today's light it sounds more like alchemy than science.

According to Beauchamp (2002), Hawthorne was wary of attempts to use science to improve life, pointing out that such attempts often did not turn out how one wished it would. He believed that divine providence should bring change to society and that people who attempted any kind of social engineering would not get the outcomes they wanted. For this reason he opposed the abolitionists even though he was opposed to slavery (1).

Hawthorne uses vivid imagery in his story to demonstrate this. He tries several concoctions on Georgina before the final, fatal draught. With each attempt, the birthmark, which always resembled a hand but at first seemed gentle, "a fairy's touch," becomes more clenched and angry-looking (2). Aylmer, convinced that his science will triumph, ignores these changes and persists in his attempts to remove it.

This story reflects Hawthorne's discomfort with the Transcendental movement in American literature. As Wohlpart (1994) points out, Hawthorne was sympathetic toward and supportive of artists in his stories. He saw artists as loving humanity and of using love to energize his art. However, he was critical of artists who acted in a God-like way (3). This pattern is very clear in "The Birthmark." Alymer is a person who loves beauty, but only in an arbitrary and effectively super-human way. Demanding perfection as dictated by his arbitrary standards, he misses the very real beauty in his wife. He fails to see that this small but very human flaw on her cheek only serves to emphasize how beautiful she truly is. He does see his wife as beautiful, but believes that that beauty cannot be enjoyed unless that tiny flaw is removed.

It is not hard to understand Aylmer's hubris. He has been told by others that he is a genius and that his discoveries are dramatic and important at a young age. What is harder to understand is why Georgina goes along with her obsession. Perhaps the reader has to consider what kind of woman would fall in love with a man so completely trapped by hubris. We know that Georgina views herself as beautiful, and that she attributes any criticism of the small mark on her cheek to jealousy. Perhaps Georgina is also susceptible to flights of ego also, a trait that makes them compatible. Perhaps she realizes that if her husband can erase her scar, his greatness will be further enhanced, and she will be a part of it. They would be partners, in a way, in his research. In fact, she states that she wants to watch him work. She has read his journal and glosses over the evidence of failure after failure. She not only accepts his genius but wants to be a part of it herself.