Essay On Symbolism In The Birthmark

In his story The Birthmark, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the female character, Georgiana and her corresponding traits and personalities to symbolize traditional femininity and male dominance found in earlier times. He also uses this symbolism to deliver the message to the reader that perfection is not real and should not be perused, because it will eventually lead to misery.
Aylmer, the husband of a beautiful woman, is in love with science perhaps as much as he is in love with his wife. But, he is not completely content with her. After marrying her, he is becoming more and more aware of a singular mark on her face: a birthmark with the shape of a hand. As time goes on, he comes to resent the birthmark vehemently. He hates it so much, that his disgust towards it is now even shared by his wife, Georgiana. She is so completely overwhelmed with both her husband’s and her own hatred towards her appearance, that she eventually agrees to participate in an experiment in where Aylmer promises to rid her of this monstrosity. The experiment is successful in getting rid of the mark, but it …show more content…
As Aylmer finally attains his wish of making his wife mirror his dreamlike beautiful partner, he then suffers greatly as his wife dies before his eyes. His suffering and his wife’s death are crucial to the delivery of Hawthorne’s message. This death raises questions regardless of its obvious fictitious nature: even though there is no true logic found in the successfulness of Aylmer’s experiment to solidify the perfection in his wife, nor in the fact that she dies after this; it still manages to raise the question: why did Georgiana had to die? Well Georgiana did not have to die. The belief of attainable perfection found that was embedded in her by Aylmer did have to die. Her death is meant to teach us that perfection is a myth that must not be explored or cultivated in any