The Birth-Mark

Aylmer, the protagonist in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark”, is a very skilled scientist, but he’s misguided. Georgiana is a very beautiful, passionate, noble woman and who has a flaw, the red hand shaped birthmark on her left cheek. Aylmer is an 18th-century scientist who is committed to his work. Aylmer’s entire life has been about figuring out the way that nature works. He recently married Georgiana. Georgiana is distinctive in that she has a minuscule red birthmark on her cheek in the shape of a diminutive hand. Most men who pursued her found the birthmark attractive; some catty women said that it messed up an otherwise perfect face. Georgiana has always liked it, until Aylmer brings up the topic one day soon after their marriage.…

"The Birth-Mark" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, emphasizes how important standards are throughout his writing by focusing on beauty standards, psychological abuse and sacrifice. Hawthorne begins his short story by addressing the fact that Georgina has a birthmark and reveals that the main character and alchemist, Aylmer, with the help of his assistant, Aminidab, can remove it by making a potion to make his wife's imperfection disappear. Reaching out to Georgina about the birthmark and adding that he…

In “The Birth-Mark”, the author Nathaniel Hawthorne provides a short story in which he has represented the characters with a higher meaning. The characters, Aylmer, Georgiana and Aminadab are given a bigger meaning than the surface of their characters; characterized as science, nature and man. Aylmer is symbolized science in “The Birth-Mark”. He is scientist whose love for science has intervene with the love of his wife, Georgiana. His greater love for science has caused him the desire to…

In the short stories, Boys and Girls by, Alice Munro and The Birth Mark by Nathaniel Hawthorne, each author has shown similarities of two young women who seem to change their appearance or personality to conform to the desires of strong male figures in their lives. Both authors use their talent in literature to express their societal views and the role women were expected to play in that time period. It was important that authors could use their talent of writing to express their own societal…

Nathaniel Hawthorne uses his theme of man versus nature in his short story “The Birth-Mark” to show how in the end nature will always win. The short story consist of successful scientific experiments, but nature proves to be more powerful that any manmade creation. In the end the attempt to control nature with science ends only with death as well as the downfall to man. Aylmer held the job as an alchemist who strives for perfection in his wife. Aylmer represents man in the short story…

In Napier’s view, the main subject matters of “The Birth-Mark” are union and separation. Napier starts of her article by attaching one of these two subjects to each of the main characters; consequently, Georgiana is deemed a symbol of union, and Aylmer is said to represent separation. Georgiana comes to embody unity primarily because of the birthmark upon her left cheek, “It is the birthmark that is the center of her reconciliatory nature, which joins her simultaneously to the world of men and…

There are many different aspects of Romanticism. Romanticism according to the Oxford English Dictionary is “Designating, relating to, or characteristic of a movement or style during the late 18th and 19th centuries in Europe marked by an emphasis on feeling, individuality, and passion rather than classical form and order, and typically preferring grandeur, picturesqueness, or naturalness to finish and proportion.” There were many romantic writers throughout the 19th century. Nathaniel Hawthorne…

Nathaniel Hawthorne, writes the literary work “The Birth Mark.” The writer tell a story of Aylmer and his wife Georgiana, the story is centered around a birth mark on Georgiana face and how Aylmer is affected by the sight of it. At first Aylmer is not fazed by the birth mark, but the more he focused on it, the more obsessed he became with it. Aylmer sees it as a flaw in Georgiana appearance and become disgusted with it. Aylmer saw himself a great scientist and he wanted to remove the mark. At…

In both "The Raven" by Poe and "The Birthmark" by Hawthorne we see representations of the supernatural. In "The Birthmark", Georgiana's husband thinks of his wife as nearly perfect except for her birthmark "No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from the hand of Nature, that this slighest possible defect-which we hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty-shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly imperfection". (645) He convinces his wife to allow him to remove the birth mark…

The heart of a story lies in the moral. Once a story has been read, the reader must understand the moral, in order to appreciate the story. Sometimes a story 's moral can be explained with a cliché. Washington Irving 's Rip Van Winkle, can be captured by the cliché, you reap what you sow. Rip 's life was not fruitful, as many years were wasted, causing him to not reap any rewards. The Birthmark, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, follows a man plagued by the obsession to remove his wife 's birthmark, in…