Entering the gym for the first time is a crucial experience for one who wants to reach his objectives. The very first workout is the most embarrassing one, and one can encounter many obstacles. It is very easy to feel embarrassed by your body while exercising around people in shape. Thinking that you are stared and judged by all these people is a very difficult experience. Physical appearance, just like emotional feeling is subject to social influence coming from our peers. " The Birthmark" by Hawthorne Nathaniel and "The Fat Girl" by Dubus Andre are two short stories about the defective result of other impacts on our self-image.
In "The Birthmark" we witness the evolution of Georgiana, Aylmer's wife, opinion impacted by his husband's action.
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Most men consider Georgiana's birthmark attractive in contrast to women that think it messed up a perfect face. Georgiana has always liked it until Aylmer brings up the topic; he thinks the birthmarks is Georgiana only flaw, so he wants to remove it. After noticing the mark on the cheek, Aylmer started hating it; his hatred was so intense that he showed physical reaction when he sees it "when they sat together at the evening hearth his eyes wandered stealthily to her cheek, and beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood fire, the spectral hand that wrote mortality where he would fain have worshipped"(Hawthorne 306).Due to Aylmer continuous reaction to the mark, Georgiana herself started to react to his reaction"Georgiana soon learned to shudder at his gaze"(306). The charming birthmark view by Georgiana started to become uglier; one day she even called it odious "...odious hand"(306). Georgiana wants to please her husband, so she asked him to remove the birthmark at any cost"'let the attempt be made at whatever risk"(307). Georgiana went from a good life to a burdened one because of Aylmer pressure "while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror and disgust,--life is a burden"(307). Aylmer pressured her wife through tricks to receive an operation that she will not be able to survive. Aylmer represents society which pressures people, Georgiana, to conform to a specific standard, perfection or removal of the
He succeeds in removing the birthmark; however, he unfortunately causes his wife’s death in the process. Through “The Birthmark”, Hawthorne suggests that nothing paradoxical can exist on this earth, and that being imperfect is just part of being human. Being a man of science, Aylmer rendered Georgiana's birthmark "as a symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death." Through the birthmark on Georgiana, Hawthorne is able to portray that nature didn’t intend for things to be perfect. People are not perfect because the human condition is imperfect.
“The Birth Mark” is a story of an elusive search for perfection when an alchemist named Aylmer who is committed to his work, and is married to a beautiful woman named Georgiana, attempts to remove his wife’s birthmark. Aylmer brings up the topic of her birthmark soon after their marriage and says that she would be perfect if it were removed. This statement completely destroys Georgiana’s self-image, and now believes that she is ugly since her husband believes the same. Georgiana is so devoted to her husband that she views herself utterly through his vision of
The sin that Aylmer shows throughout the story is in relation to Georgina’s birthmark, which dramatically and suddenly grabs hold of his character. Aylmer becomes egotistic in the ways of his actions and thoughts, not considering that he himself has a problem but that his wife’s imperfection is the problem. By Aylmer’s immoral and obsessive desire for perfection, he took Georgina’s liberty and self-confidence away, which reveales his sins. First, before the marriage, Aylmer had not been bothered by the birth-mark on Georgiana’s cheek. James Quinn and Ross Baldessarini note that “[s]oon after marrying, however, Aylmer discovered that he can think of little else but the birth-mark,” and that it disturbed him and took away from her true beauty. In relation, it is implied that this omission in Aylmer “seems to suggest that insights into human behavior are likely to be subjective, imperfect, unsatisfying” (Quinn and Baldessarini). Subsequently, Aylmer’s sin is presented through a dream in which he is conducting a surgery on Georgina to perfect her beauty. Aylmer’s idea of having a perfect wife “is characterized by Hawthorne as a mark of ‘original sin’” (Quinn and Baldessarini) or even that mankind’s race is born with imperfection. This is stated by Hawthorne as “the fatal flaw of humanity, which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her production . . . to imply that they are temporary and finite” (120). Most considerable is with the intention of Aylmer’s dream, clearly “suggests the intense, violent and remarkably sexual reaction the birth-mark evokes in Aylmer” (Quinn and Baldessarini).
The two motifs of morality and imperfection in “The Birthmark” direct the readers’ attention towards Hawthorne’s belief that one 's instinctive actions represent human nature in a more genuine way than actions influenced by religious laws. In the short story Georgiana’s blemish represents the actuality of human nature and not the false pretense of perfection that people thrive so hard to achieve. However, Georgiana herself represents the general population in society. Because Georgiana dies after the author portrays her as completely perfect, one can imply that perfection cannot be achieved and is only an idea fabricated by society’s leaders or governmental bodies. In “The Birthmark” the government is embodied within the character Aylmer, whom is married to Georgiana. Kary Meyers Skredsvig agrees that Aylmer exhibits characteristics similar to those of the government when she write, “Aylmer...is consistently associated throughout the story with the highest of intentions, standards and worth” (Skredsvig 99). The marriage between the two characters indicates the correlation between the government’s superior influence and human behavior. Even Georgiana expresses her inferiority to Aylmer when she describes her own level of intellect as “simple” (Hawthorne 1). Aylmer 's strong yearn to eliminate the blemish upon Georgiana’s face
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Birthmark, he uses unperfected beauty to confirm that if God’s creations are meddled with the product is harmful. A scientist, Alymer is married to a beautiful women named Georgiana whose only flaw is a birthmark on her left cheek.
& nbsp; The Mark of Ugliness In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Birthmark, there is indeed a representation of Although the other underlying personality is not represented within himself, it is rather portrayed through his assistant Aminadab. Since Aylmer is lacking so much within himself, he is unable to appreciate his wife even though she was dying. Basically, if Aylmer had the sensibility of Aminadab, he could have realized how beautiful she was even with her birthmark. During
The scene in question opens with Georgiana asking Aylmer to recall if he had dreamt of the birthmark. Georgiana’s high self-consciousness and shame felt from Aylmer’s horrified stares motivates her to confront Aylmer. At first, Aylmer denies the suggestion but then decides to admit he had dreamt of it. Before Aylmer can reveal his nightmare, Georgiana expresses a desire to rid herself of the mark. In doing this, Georgiana describes the birthmark using negative terms such as “fatal birthmark” and “stain.” Prior to her request, Georgiana had described the birthmark as “a charm.” This shift in perspective is key to both the plot of the story and its implications for
One of the main themes discussed in this story is perfection which was evident by Aylmer obsessing over making his wife perfect by removing the birthmark off
“There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles,” George Eliot. Beauty has caused men to move mountain, and jump through countless hoops. It is a quality that is subjective and affects the beholder differently. In Poe’s Ligea and Hawthorne’s The Birthmark, Ligea, Rowena, and Georgina all had different orders of beauty that similarly affects how their husbands saw them. In these two pieces of literature there was an exaltation of beauty as an abstraction that hid the depth of the women and led to deceit and the sense of superiority in their husbands.
After a deeper analysis of the characters in the story “The Birthmark” it is easy to see there are multiple hidden meanings throughout. The characteristics and actions of Aylmer, Georgiana, Amenidab and Nature help us to see deeper into the characters and see their true motivations and meanings in the story.
Analysis of The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Although “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne was written in the mid-1800s, its themes and ideas are still a part of society today. The 19th century was a time of change, just like this, the millennium, was a time of great change. Hawthorne’s ideas about science, beauty, and life still play a major part in our lives, despite many improvements.
Both “Hill’s like White Elephants” by Ernst Hemingway and “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne have many common elements of comparison between them. The main element of the stories that will be compared is this thought of an operation. Both stories stem from these two operations and the comparisons derive from how the women react and respond to the two men in the story. Both stories are comparable by the common theme of a life changing operation, how the women first react to the operation and how the characters develop throughout the stories.
Our society has many ways of manifesting its obsession with physical perfection. In our society people go to extreme lengths to achieve perfection. The 'Birthmark';, written more than a century ago, is an early version of our modern obsession with physical perfection.
The tone adopted by Hawthorne from the inception of the narrative toward Aylmer urges the reader to respect Aylmer’s scientific ambition—directly his triumph of head over heart, but indirectly his objectification of Georgiana and subsequent attempts to fix something that she never thought was a flaw. Not only is Aylmer’s obsession with getting rid of her birthmark selfish in that he does it for “the sake of giving himself peace” (647) rather than any desire to make his wife happy, he also admits to feeling guilt over his tyrannical treatment of her. For example, his “horror and disgust” in response to her facial blight rarely escapes her notice, and when she reacts poorly to his “convulsive shudder,” he attempts to soothe her and “release her mind from the burden of actual things” (650) as if she is an empty-headed infant in need of a pacifier. Furthermore, in response to her desperate request for its removal, he isolates her from humanity, administers potentially harmful concoctions into her rooms and body without her knowledge, and ultimately—and rapturously—succeeds in shrinking the mark at the cost of her
Every man before has always complimented Georgiana on her sweet imperfection. People would tell her all the time that true beauty was in that little blemish. Aylmer, being the man of Science wanted to change what nature had created. Typically, we all know better than to go against Nature, but not Aylmer. Georgiana finally agreed to let her husband remove the birthmark due to a frightening dream Aylmer had encountered. Aylmer started working on a potion to remove Georgiana 's birthmark. As soon as Georgiana sipped the potion, she suddenly falls into a deep coma-like state. The birthmark magically disappears from Georgina 's face. However, as the birthmark fades away, so does Georgina 's life. Hawthorne uses Georgiana 's character to symbolize beauty in this story. Georgiana is already made perfect in the eyes of Nature and all other men, expect Aylmer. Aylmer, representing Science, tries to change Georgiana 's beauty that Nature has created. Aylmer was successful in removing the birthmark, but unsuccessful in keeping Georgiana alive. Aylmer was too intertwined in Science to realize that Georgiana was perfectly made by Nature. Nature paid Aylmer back for trying to correct Georgiana 's face by taking the life of his beloved