Tragic Flaws In The Birthmark

Tragic flaw: Who’s responsible In “The Birthmark”, both Aylmer and Georgiana was at fault in creating a downward spiral plummeting their happy romance into a devastating tragedy. One was through the obsession with perfection while the other was through love and compassion. In literature, a tragic flaw refers to when the main character ends up dead or defeated by a characteristic flaw that leads to their demise. “Hamartia” which was introduced by Aristotle, means that an error in judgment or accident leading the protagonist to their ruins (Hamartia) best shows the Aylmer and Georgiana in “The Birthmark.” Religion and science, specifically morality and sin, was addressed in the story, highlighting Hawthorn's fascination with the ideas …show more content…
Aylmer viewed nature as a flaw in humanity in which science could innervate, turning those flaws into an idealistic system of perfection. This was believed to be the symbol of eternity and true immortality that he sought. It was in this growing of arrogance, overconfidence, and stubbornness that led his romance into devastation, making it into a dreadful tragedy (Rosenberg).
Aylmer was married to a beautiful woman who he considered to be almost perfect. According to him, Georgiana was perfect besides the mark on her face that she was born with. This mark to Aylmer emphasized that a small imperfection can damage the beauty of a piece of art. This makes it a living nightmare for him: “He found this one defect grew more and more intolerable with every moment” expressing “the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould” showing a “symbol of his wife’s liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and die” …show more content…
This is shown clearly in Aylmer's dream, a dream which hides his wish to kill Georgiana: “truth often finds its way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practise an unconscious self-deception, during our waking moments” (Shakinovsky). When he awoke, the dream was perfectly remembered showing the stakes that his heart would go to to get rid of this travesty, giving him peace.
Hawthorn compares Aylmer with the transcendentalist Emerson by their inability to grasp what is reality and what is spiritual. Emerson is described as a great searcher for facts that seem to disappear in the face of reality because they were seen as insubstantial. Aylmer was described this way by Hawthorn because he seems to handle physical implications, yet spiritualized them all just as he did with the mark