Short Stories The BirthMark Nathanial Hawthorne Summary of

Short Stories

The Birth-Mark Nathanial Hawthorne

Summary of the Plot • Aylmer is a late 18 th-century scientist who is totally and completely committed to his work. His entire life has been about figuring out the way that nature works, to the detriment of his personal and social life. However, just recently, he has married a beautiful woman, Georgiana. • Georgiana is distinctive in that she has a small red birthmark on her cheek in the shape of a tiny hand. Aylmer brings up the topic one day soon after their marriage. He doesn't like the birthmark; he thinks Georgiana would be perfect if it were removed. • Georgiana falls completely to pieces. Because Aylmer thinks the birthmark is ugly, she now thinks herself ugly, and both partners become increasingly unhappy in their marriage. In Aylmer's mind, the birthmark becomes the symbol of human imperfection. Some time later, Aylmer tells his wife of a dream he had, in which he tried to surgically remove the birthmark. • Georgiana is so upset by this dream that she tells Aylmer to figure out a way to get rid of the birthmark. Aylmer has already been working on such a plan. He takes Georgiana into his laboratory, where he has set up a special room for her. • When the elixir is finally ready, Aylmer brings it to his wife, who drinks it and falls asleep. The birthmark fades almost entirely from her face. Sadly, Georgiana wakes up to tell Aylmer that she is dying. • The narrator then takes over for the conclusion to tell us that Georgiana couldn't live as a perfect being, since human beings are necessarily imperfect.

Narrator Third Person (Omniscient) o “The Birthmark” is told in a strong, subjective voice that draws attention to the narrator and makes him a key player in the story. At nearly every moment, we know what the narrator is thinking and how he views the characters’ behavior. o It is clear from the beginning that the narrator dislikes Aylmer and his quest to eliminate the birthmark and that he sympathizes with Georgiana. o The narrator might be characterized as a chatty, intelligent friend sharing a particularly juicy piece of gossip. o The narrator can also be characterized as a moralist who condescends to his readers. Rather than trusting us to figure out the symbolism of the birthmark, for example, or allowing us to draw our own conclusions about the soundness of Aylmer’s experiment, the narrator rushes to explain every metaphor and symbol as if we might miss his point.

Characters • Aylmer is an intellectual, a man whose mind has overpowered his sense of decency. An incredibly skilled scientist, he has made many exciting discoveries about the physical world. His inquiries into the spiritual world, however, tend to be more disturbing. Although he protests that he would never actually carry out his more outlandish ambitions—such as turning base metal into gold, making a potion that would give its drinker eternal life, or creating humans from nothing—he believes that he is at least capable of performing such miracles. And his actions belie his claim to respect life: he has invented a poison capable of killing a person instantly or during the course of years, depending on the administrator’s whim. Such an invention proves that Aylmer longs to control nature itself. Aylmer’s journals reveal that he considers his greatest achievements worthless in comparison to his ambition, which is nothing less than to exercise a godlike control over life.

• Georgiana A beautiful and passionate woman, Georgiana is undone by her allegiance to her husband. The ideal wife—at least according to the ideals of a bygone era —Georgiana considers Aylmer to be her master. Because he is horrified by her appearance, she discards years of praise and becomes disgusted with herself. Because she believes she should do anything to make Aylmer happy, she willingly risks death. Living in rooms decorated like elegant boudoirs; breathing in mysterious, character-altering fumes; and looking at fake vistas, Georgiana acts as if she is a robot under the control of her creator. She acts as society says she should, trusting her husband absolutely, and her only reward for her obedience and deference is death. Perhaps Hawthorne is suggesting that although devotion is a laudable trait, women should not be expected to obey their husbands at all costs. Even though Hawthorne’s characters can often be two -dimensional people, Georgiana is far more complex and believable a character than is Aylmer. A highly intelligent woman, she passes the time by reading the works of philosophy she finds in her husband’s scientific library. She examines Aylmer’s accounts of his experiments and understands everything she finds there. She is also far nobler than her husband, willing to risk her life to make someone else happy.

Themes • Theme of Science Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote "The Birthmark" at a time when the scientific method was being glorified and people were starting to think science really could take them anywhere they wanted to go. His story argues that, despite the general optimism, science really does have its limitations. There are certain things that humans are not privileged to know, not capable of doing. It is not only ignorant, the story seems to say, but downright dangerous to try and play God. • Theme of Mortality The story’s most important assertion is that to be human is necessarily to be flawed. To strive for perfection is to deny one's own mortality, to deny what makes us human, and to achieve such perfection is essentially impossible. The story also examines the division between man's physical, earthly half and his lofty, spiritual half. "The Birthmark" seems to argue that part of us is necessarily earthbound, yet part of us will always seek to be immortal and spiritual.

• Theme of Foolishness and Folly "The Birthmark“ holds up to inspection the flaws of mankind. In this case, the main character Aylmer suffers from over-ambition and blind obsession. He seeks to remove his wife's birthmark – the symbol of necessarily flawed humanity – and make her perfect. In his single-minded pursuit of this ideal, Aylmer ignores all the warning signs urging him to stop. Through his story, Hawthorne illustrates the flaws of mankind and the consequences that come with foolish obsession. • Theme of Marriage "The Birthmark" uses the example of a newly-married couple to ask questions about the nature of love and the dynamic of marriage. Aylmer seems to love his wife aslong as he can perfect her into something entirely outside the realm of human imperfection. His wife Georgiana is so committed to her husband that she defines herself utterly through his vision of her. The story questions what it means to love, to trust, and to commit to another person, and what consequences the extreme of any one of these might bring. • Theme of Man and the Natural World "The Birthmark" is interested in Nature as the personified creator of all things. It tells the story of a man who is trying to become a creator of sorts himself, in trying to "repair" a "flaw" that Nature has left on another human being. Part of the problem with the unbounded scientific urge, Hawthorne argues, is that it ignores the natural boundaries set for man's accomplishments.

Setting she found herself breathing an atmosphere of penetrating fragrance […] The scene around her looked like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, sombre rooms, where he had spent his brightest years in recondite pursuits, into a series of beautiful apartments not unfit to be the secluded abode of a lovely woman. The walls were hung with gorgeous curtains, which imparted the combination of grandeur and grace that no other species of adornment can achieve; and as they fell from the ceiling to the floor, their rich and ponderous folds, concealing all angles and straight lines, appeared to shut in the scene from infinite space. For aught Georgiana knew, it might be a pavilion among the clouds. And Aylmer, excluding the sunshine, which would have interfered with his chemical processes, had supplied its place with perfumed lamps, emitting flames of various hue, but all uniting in a soft, impurpled radiance.

Setting The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that hot and feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which by the quantities of soot clustered above it seemed to have been burning for ages. There was a distilling apparatus in full operation. Around the room were retorts, tubes, cylinders, crucibles, and other apparatus of chemical research. An electrical machine stood ready for immediate use. The atmosphere felt oppressively close, and was tainted with gaseous odors which had been tormented forth by the processes of science. The severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its naked walls and brick pavement, looked strange, accustomed as Georgiana had become to the fantastic elegance of her boudoir.

Symbolism Aylmer is a character, of course, but he also functions as a symbol of intellect and science. Hawthorne provides almost none of the details about Aylmer that we expect. We never learn his age, birthplace, childhood, or habits of speech. He goes out of his way to make Aylmer a fantastical, nonrealistic being. By making Aylmer a symbol for the mind and then showing how dangerous it is when the mind operates independent of morality, Hawthorne warns us that unchecked ambition without regard for morality will result only in disaster and death. The Birthmark Georgiana’s birthmark symbolizes mortality. According to the narrator, every living thing is flawed in some way, nature’s way of reminding us that every living thing eventually dies. Aylmer’s disgust for his wife’s birthmark suggests the horror he feels at the prospect of death. He mistakenly comes to believe that if he can root out this symbol of humanity, it will mean that he has the power to prolong life indefinitely. Aylmer also mistakenly believes that the birthmark represents Georgiana’s moral decrepitude and spiritual flaws even though she isn’t a woman prone to sin at all.

Foreshadowing “The Birthmark” is filled with foreshadowing. v. Aylmer dreams of cutting off Georgiana’s birthmark and finding that the roots plunge down into her heart, which he decides to cut out; v. Georgiana faints the first time she sees the laboratory; vthe beautiful, fast-blooming flower Aylmer creates withers and turns black as soon as Georgiana touches it; va reflection of Georgiana in a metal plate reveals the shape of a hand, so Aylmer throws the plate into acid, destroying it. Over and over, we see that Aylmer’s experiments usually go awry and have destructive, unintended consequences. Georgiana’s death, therefore, comes as no surprise to the attentive reader.