Birthmark
Hawthorne's "The Birthmark"
Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Birthmark" is an ironic story in which man's faith in science as the ultimate savior of humankind is demonstrated to be misplaced. Ever since science has come to the forefront of human knowledge, people have continually increased their faith and thus their dependency on it. In a way, science has become a new form of religion, one in which people place their faith to solve what they see as their everyday problems. However, too much faith in science's ability to solve problems has created a situation where people turn to science to solve problems that are not there. Because science has already solved many of life's major problems, such as certain diseases that have plagued humanity for centuries, people seem to look for new problems for science to solve for them. "The Birthmark" is a perfect example of how a person can turn to science…...
mlaWorks Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Birthmark." The Literature Network. Web 21 Sept. 2013
http://www.online-literature.com/hawthorne/125/
Vonnegut, Kurt. "Harrison Bergeron." Wordfight.org. Web. 21 Sept. 2013.
Georgiana is beautiful and doesn't even think about the birthmark until her husband points to it and then goes into a deep state of misery because of that. In order to relief her husband of the misery, she agrees to drink the potion which leads to her death.
Emily on the other hand is not so obliging. Though she has suffered enough at the hands of her father who wanted to keep all men away from her so she could be a real lady, but Emily doesn't let her life end like Georgiana. She doesn't meet her death because of a man but instead takes his life and then meets her own death in due course of time. Emily was a victim of a stern father while Georgiana was a victim of a perfectionist. In both cases, these women suffer but while Emily takes revenge, Georgiana dies a silent death.…...
mlaReferences
The Centenary Edition of the Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 20 vols. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1962-85. "The Birth-mark." 36-56. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1968.
Frederick J. Hoffman (editor) Olga W. Vickery (editor) William Faulkner: Two Decades of Criticism. Michigan State College Press. East Lansing, MI. 1951.
William Faulkner, "A Rose for Emily," Collected Stories (New York: Vintage, 1977), p. 128
Judith Fetterley. The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction. Indiana University Press. Bloomington, in. 1978.
To Aylmer, the birthmark represents more than an annoyance. He "possessed this degree of faith in man's ultimate control over Nature" and viewed the mark as an opportunity to demonstrate his dominion over Nature. Instead of appreciating Georgiana, Aylmer sought to transform her, to change an essential part of her being. As the narrator states, the mark was "deeply interwoven, as it were, with the texture and substance of her face."
Removing the birthmark would give Aylmer tremendous power: over Georgiana as well as over Nature and God. Indeed, he took his wife's life in the process. Thus, Hawthorne inserts feminist commentary into his short story. Aylmer demonstrated his power and revels drunkenly in his triumph: "he failed to look beyond the shadowy scope of time, and, living once for all in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present." The birthmark symbolizes the beauty that can be discovered in…...
Birthmark
In his book, The Birthmark, Nathaniel Hawthorne explores the conflict of science and nature that exists deep in the human psyche. Hawthorne's seemingly simple story of Aylmer, Georgiana and Aminadab reveals much about Hawthorne's attitudes toward science and progress. In the telling of their story, he creates an effective allegory about the role of science in the modern world. Ultimately, Hawthorne's story warns the reader of placing science on a pedestal above more human concerns.
Georgiana's birthmark represents the fact that not everything within nature is perfect. It is a reminder that the beautiful and kind Georgiana is capable of death and sorrow that afflicts the human spirit. After their wedding, Aylmer becomes obsessed with the birthmark, and he finally convinces Georgiana that her birthmark is ugly and unsightly; instead of the charm she believed it was. In this sense, Aylmer abuses the power and credibility he has amassed as…...
mlaWorks Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Birthmark. 27 November 2003. Available online at http://www.4literature.net/Nathaniel_Hawthorne/Birthmark
HAWTHONE'S BITHMAK AND YOUNG GOODMAN BOWN
Hawthorne was born 1804 and brought up in Salem, Massachusetts to a Puritan family. When Hawthorne was four, his father died. After this incident he was mostly in the female company of his two sisters, an aunt and his retiring mother who was not close to her offspring. Hawthorne was known as a reserved personality but during four years at college he established close friendships with his male classmates, several of which he continued for life. "Young Goodman Brown" was published in 1835, when Nathaniel Hawthorne was 31 years old. "Birthmark" was published as a short story in Mosses from an Old Manse in 1846.
Writing style relating to ethics and symbolism
Hawthorne is known as an American omanticist and his style influenced by such noteworthy authors as Herman Melville, William Faulkner and Henry James. His work enlightens the real characters in the society, the matters, which…...
mlaReferences
The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1846)
Young Goodman Brown (1835)
small, crimson birthmark on Georgiana's cheek represents humanity and its inherent flaws. It defines Georgiana as an individual, as a human. Aylmer saw the birthmark as a symbol of Georgiana's earthly mortality, and as "a symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death." Georgiana is seen as a perfect specimen of beauty, except for the birthmark. Without the birthmark Georgiana would be perfect at a divine level, but its presence gives her undesirable earthly qualities. Her inner and outer beauty is marred by the birthmark, which distracts Aylmer from noticing and appreciating her positive qualities. The birthmark does have a connection to Faith's pink ribbons and Hester's scarlet letter in the way that they are all symbols of humanity. They all represent the way imperfection is a necessary human quality. To be flawless is to be inhuman. The hand shaped birthmark puts a grip on Georgiana's…...
Reductive Entrapment: Hawthorne's "The irthmark"
In the essay "When We Dead Awaken" by Adrienne Rich, the author frankly alludes to the artistic captivity that male writers place women in, arguing that women have always been trapped and explored by poets [footnoteRef:1]and will no doubt, continue to suffer this experience. While some might argue that women are acting as the muse to the poet, and the male poet is placing women upon a pedestal, this is far too simplistic a viewpoint to hold, as Rich demonstrates. Rather, poets create these one dimensional women and enshroud them between the words of the poem, locking them into this eternal reality. In this case male poets are exerting a form of artistic tyranny. Yet as Rich shows us, this state of captivity is indeed a reductive place to be, with all meaning diminished into a battle of holding on to beauty and youth, implying…...
mlaBibliography
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Birthmark." Online Literature. www.online-literature.com.
Accessed December 10, 2010. http://www.online-literature.com/poe/125/
Nabokov, Vladimir. Invitation to a Beheading. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.
Poe, Edgar Allen. The Raven. London: George Redway, 1885
irthmark, 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…...
mlaBibliography
1) Beauchamp, Gorman. 2002. "Hawthorne and the Universal Reformers." Utopian Studies 13. (Beauchamp, 2002)
2) Fitzpatrick, Martin. 2000. "To a Practised Touch': Miles Coverdale and Hawthorne's Irony." ATQ 14:1, pp. 27+. (Fitzpatrick, 2000)
3) Wohlpart, A. James. 1994. "Allegories of art, allegories of heart: Hawthorne's 'Egotism' and 'The Christmas Banquet.'" Studies in Short Fiction, June 22. (Wohlpart, 1994)
ALSO:
He does not care because he is greedy. Victor is the same way. He wants the knowledge of how nature works. He is curious and this eventually gets the best of him. He says, "I would sacrifice my fortune, my existence, my every hope, to the furtherance of my enterprise. One man's life or death was but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought" (Shelley 13). Victor realizes the folly of his ways but it is too late to salvage anything that he has lost. Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler agrees with this assumption, noting that the irony of the story is that, "at the culmination of his research, the moment of his triumph, all Victor's pleasure in life ends" (Hoobler 159). Both men are consumed and actually believe that they possess some of the characteristics of God.
Both men suffer from their selfish…...
mlaWork Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Birthmark." The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Cassil, R.V.,
ed. 1981 W.W. Norton and Company. pp. 600-13.
Hoobler, Dorothy and Thomas. The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006.
Erich S. Rupprecht. "Nathaniel Hawthorne." Supernatural Fiction Writers. 1985. Scribner's
Personal Responsibility: "Rappaccini's Daughter" versus "The Birthmark"
Both Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter" and "The Birthmark" contain similar themes of the dangers of human pride, specifically male pride, and arrogance. In both stories, male figures in the name of science explicitly tamper with the fate of the women in their care. In the case of Rappaccini, the sorcerer-like figure slowly poisons his own daughter so she cannot come into contact with anyone without poisoning them herself. In the case of "The Birthmark," the scientist Aylmer is obsessed with removing his wife Georgina's birthmark to the point that it kills her. The blindness of these men to their own ambition causes them to destroy what they ostensibly wish to save.
"The Birthmark" begins with an exchange between Aylmer and his wife that underlines the fact that his obsession with the birthmark is solely his own and has little to do with his wife's desire.…...
mlaWorks Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Birthmark,"1-10
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "Rappaccini's Daughter," 1-20.
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Mather 22)
Hawthorne clearly stepped away from the Puritan ethic by consistently alluding to the existence of the earthly supernatural. Though this was a fear of the Puritans, clearly it was associated with Satan and possession of the living. In Hawthorne's works the supernatural was associated with less grand sources, such as those seen in Young Goodman Brown. (Hoeltje 39-40) Hawthorne allows his characters to explore concepts that would have been those deemed heretical within the Puritan settings of the works.
In The Birth-Mark, Hawthorne associates the active expulsion of character traits of humanity clearly results in the death of the whole.
The line of divergence in "The Birth Mark" is indicated by its name. e all have our birth-marks, -- traits of character, which may be temporarily suppressed, or relegated to the background, but which cannot be eradicated and are certain to reappear at unguarded moments, or on exceptional occasions...The father who…...
mlaWorks Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel." The Columbia Encyclopedia. 6th ed. 2004.
Emmett, Paul J. "Narrative Suppression: Sin, Secrecy and Subjectivity in "The Minister's Black Veil." Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 25.1-2 (2004): 101+. Questia. 16 Jan. 2005 http://www.questia.com/ .
Gartner, Matthew. "The Scarlet Letter' and the Book of Esther: Scriptural Letter and Narrative Life." Studies in American Fiction 23.2 (1995): 131+. Questia. 16 Jan. 2005
ith real sense of self, she will have a skewed look at the world around her. In her eyes, she is empty, as is the world.
Nel is grounded but this does not mean she is complete. Sula is labeled a wild child because she is not conventional like those around her. She moves to get herself away from Bottom and has several casual affairs with men. hen she returns, the townspeople view her as wicked. Those in her town call her a "roach" (112) and "bitch" (112) and her death is a welcome relief. She has an affair with Nel's husband, which makes Nel look like nothing short of an angel in the novel. Sula's life was not nice and neat. Nel married and had children, which was something of a traditional lifestyle for a woman. In short, Nel conforms to what society expects of women. Sula decided not…...
mlaWork Cited
Morrison, Toni. Sula. New York: Plume Books. 1973. Print.
Morrison most probably wants to emphasize that Sula is stronger than Nel because she is in control of her life.
The end of the book presents readers with Nel's acknowledgement that she enjoyed seeing Chicken Little's death.
Morrison's Sula is meant to induce a state of rebellion in readers as they are influenced in believing that it is wrong for them to act in accordance with society's laws, considering that the system is apparently flawed. The inhabitants of Bottom are barely able to sustain themselves in the beginning but gradually come to be more and more efficient in improving conditions in the area. In spite of his eccentric nature, Shadrack is one of the most influential individuals in the town.
Nel and Sula are the products of Bottom's environment but they struggle to be different from the rest of people. Even with this, Sula is the only one who actually manages to detach…...
mlaWorks cited:
Morrison, Toni, "Sula," Vintage International, 2004.
This is an interesting point-of-view about Aylmer and it works with his character. Others identify Georgiana's birthmark as something that is essentially hers and therefore, should remain with her. Shakinovsky goes even further to say that it is a "metaphor for her identity, her sexuality, her being" (Shakinovsky). Aylmer is blind to this fact altogether. He cannot see that "in removing the mark, he removes all there is of her" (Shakinovsky). He could not accept the fact that he could not just remove a portion of her -- it was all or nothing.
Shakinovsky reinforces the point that all of the characters in "The Birthmark" realize that Georgiana cannot be separated from her birthmark, except Aylmer. However, as the story progresses, the birthmark becomes "Aylmer's object, and since, as the sign of her subjectivity, it represents Georgiana, it becomes she who is his object" (Shakinovsky). Again, we see how Aylmer's…...
mlaWorks Cited
Eckstein, Barbara. "Hawthorne's 'The Birthmark: Science and Romance as Belief.'" Studies in Short Fiction. 1989. 26.4. EBSCO Resource Database. Site Accessed November 17, 2004. http://www.searchepnet.com
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Birthmark." The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Cassil, R.V., ed. 1981 W.W. Norton and Company. pp. 600-13.
Henry James. "Nathaniel Hawthorne." Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. 1879. GALE Resource Database. Site Accessed November 18, 2004. http://www.infotrac.galegroup.com
Rosenberg, Liz. "The best that earth could offer: 'The Birth-mark," a newlywed's story.'" Studies in Short Fiction. 1993. EBSCO Resource Database. Site Accessed November 17, 2004. http://www.searchepnet.com
Minister's Black Veil" and "The Birth-mark:" Hubris
Many of Nathaniel Hawthorne's works are seen as a critique of Puritan ideology and the dangers of having a judgmental attitude. "The Minister's Black Veil" illustrates the Reverend Hooper's vindictive and narrow-minded attitude not to others but to himself. He punishes himself in perpetuity for some unnamed sin although at the end of his life, right before his death, he proclaims that all human beings wear a black veil of sin, not just himself. "The Birth-mark," in contrast, depicts the dangerous overconfidence of a scientist who is certain that he can render God's creation better than God himself in his attempts to change his wife's appearance. But while Aylmer's actions are more obviously arrogant, both men are essentially acting as judge and jury over others on earth, rather than leaving that judgment to God himself.
At the beginning of "The Birthmark," Aylmer's quest to…...
mlaWorks Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Birthmark,"1-10
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Minister's Black Veil." From Twice-Told Tales, 1837, 1851,
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