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Symbolism and ambiguity in Hawthorne's work
Symbolism and ambiguity in Hawthorne's work
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Aylmer: Hawthorne uses Romanticism to describe Aylmer’s character by focusing on his personal ideals. He is an egotistical maniac who risked the life of his wife in order to remove a birthmark that she has lived with and even been complimented about. His focus on science instead of love is his true wrongdoing. He gives her a potion to remove the birthmark and she starts to feel ill but Aylmer says, “ ‘Poor? Nay, richest, happiest, most favored’” (Hawthorne 409). Her sickness does not even matter to him, just the fame and wealth he has accumulated over time. His fame for making potions to remove freckles drives him to experiment with removing the birthmark. He is a famous scientist for his creations, and his egotistical attitude leads to the demise of Georgiana. Aylmer talking about his potion being the happiest of potions shows that he does not care that his potion is killing her. …show more content…
She believes he loves her and that she loves him back, but really he only loves his science. She is a beautiful, intelligent, and caring woman who cannot see Aylmer’s true feelings. She always submits to Aylmer’s demands even if she is scared. She is not a typical woman in a story in the time period because she is highly intelligent and Hawthorne even describes her as reading in her free time. She also does not apologize for entering his laboratory, “You mistrust your wife; you have concealed the anxiety with which you watch the development of this experiment” (Hawthorne 406). She is angry because she believes he is hiding something from him and he wants an apology for entering the lab, but she sticks her ground and refuses. This is not typical behavior for a woman in this time
Throughout history individuals or groups of people have responded to power in a multitude of ways. Hoping for religious freedom, the Puritans left England for America starting in the 1620s. The Puritan community chose to withdraw in response to conflict with the higher power in England. Coincidentally, Hawthorne wrote about a Puritan Community in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during this period of migration, and in this community like all others there is always conflicts revolving around power. Hawthorne uses power imbalances in the Scarlet Letter to characterize and transform Hester, Reverend Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth.
In the short story, “The Birthmark” Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the characters, foreshadowing, symbolism, and other rhetorical devices to alert people of the consequences of man having the power to control and alter nature. Additionally, through his skillful usage of diction, Hawthorne warns of the effects of seeking perfection through science. In “The Birthmark”, Aylmer, a man devoted entirely to science, marries Georgiana, a beautiful young woman with a single imperfection. Georgiana’s imperfection bears the resemblance of a tiny crimson hand and is visible on her left cheek. The birthmark becomes the object of Aylmer’s obsession and he resolves to use his scientific prowess to correct “what Nature left imperfect in her fairest work.” He succeeds in removing the birthmark; however, he unfortunately causes his wife’s death in the process. Through “The Birthmark”, Hawthorne suggests that nothing paradisiacal can exist on this earth, and that being imperfect is just part of being human.
Fifteen years separate Washington Irving’s short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “Young Goodman Brown.” The two share an eerie connection because of the trepidation the two protagonists endure throughout the story. The style of writing between the two is not similar because of the different literary elements they choose to exploit. Irving’s “Sleepy Hollow” chronicles Ichabod Crane’s failed courtship of Katrina Van Tassel as well as his obsession over the legend of the Headless Horseman. Hawthorne’s story follows the spiritual journey of the protagonist, Young Goodman Brown, through the woods of Puritan New England where he looses his religious faith. However, Hawthorne’s work with “Young Goodman Brown” is of higher quality than Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” because Hawthorne succeeds in exploiting symbols, developing characters, and incorporating worthwhile themes.
In Nathanial Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark,” Aylmer, a crazed, “mad-scientist,” seeks to remove the scarlet handprint birthmark from his wife, Georgiana’s cheek. From the opening of the work, the third person narrator describes Aylmer’s obsession with science and the adverse effects it has had on his social life. Aylmer is tied up in this battle within himself and with his assigned association between the natural and the spiritual world. He wishes to have as much control over these colliding worlds as possible, granting himself god-like power and control in the process. In the art of manipulating nature through science, Aylmer believes he is able to alter the spiritual aspects of the natural as well. Aylmer’s focus on spirituality is Hawthorne’s way of commenting on mankind’s fixation on sin and redemption.
The Scarlet Letter involves many characters that go through several changes during the course of the story. In particular, the young minister Dimmesdale, who commits adultery with Hester, greatly changes. He is the moral blossom of the book, the character that makes the most progress for the better. It is true that Dimmesdale, being a minister, should be the role model of the townspeople. He is the last person who should commit such an awful crime and lie about it, but in the end, he confesses to the town. Besides, everybody, including ministers, sin, and the fact that he confesses illustrates his courage and morality.
... like Hester. He is implying that she is the victim and that the Puritans are actually at fault for this sin. Hawthorne's main goal is to convey the Puritans as sinful and unholy. He does not approve of the sin they hide and he thinks there should be punishment for their actions.
“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection,”(George Orwell) is a relevant idea pertaining to the theme, how striving for perfection in humanity is foolish. Aylmer is a late 18th-century scientist who recently retired so he could marry his love Georgiana. Georgiana has a small birthmark on her cheek in the shape of a small hand. Most men who liked her found the birthmark attractive. Some women on the other hand said that it messed up an otherwise flawless face. Georgiana did not have a problem with it until one day, until one day Aylmer says he does not like the birthmark. He feels as though Georgiana would be perfect and flawless if it were just removed. Georgiana is crushed, because Aylmer thinks the birthmark is ugly, so of course she now thinks she is ugly. For Aylmer, the birthmark is a symbol of human imperfection. Aylmer has a dream in which he tried to remove the birthmark on Georgiana’s face. The deeper he cut, the deeper the birthmark would go. Until it was, finally, all the way down to Georgiana's heart. In the dream, he keeps cutting through her heart to finally get it out. Georgiana is disturbed and upset by this dream. She decides that she will let Aylmer find a way to remove the birthmark to make his unhappiness stop. Of Aylmer already has been working this at his laboratory. He has set up a room for her to stay while he comes up with a solution to remove the birthmark. When the antidote is finished,
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark”, is the story of a crazed scientist whose strive for perfection not only leads to the death of his beautiful wife, but the attempt of man to have power over nature. It follows the story of Aylmer and his obsession with removing the birthmark off his beautiful wife, Georgiana. “His unnatural fixation to his wife’s birthmark even consumes him in his sleep as he dreams of cutting it off much like scraping an apple off its skin.” (Snodgrass 29). This narrative explores the themes of perfection, and the conflict between science and the natural world.
After Georgina eventually passed, Aylmer was left to deal with what his obsession for perfection had brought upon his wife, who was thought to be the closest thing to perfection. Hawthorne uses many different literary devices throughout this story, with the most prevalent being his use of symbolism. of the book. Ed. Michael Meyer.
In Hawthorne’s story The Birthmark, the main character, Aylmer thinks his wife is the most beautiful person in the world and the only feature that keeps her from being perfect is a birthmark that is upon her cheek. When Aylmer mentions the birthmark to Georgiana, his wife, she becomes upset that her husband does not think he loves her, because of her birthmark. He tries many different ways to remove the mark, but all end with no solution to the problem. When Aylmer believes he has finally cracked the code of removing the unsightly blemish his concoction ends up killing his wife, for as the birthmark faded so did her life. Thus violating nature to remove the mark, committing a sin because he killed his wife, and standing alone since he killed the woman he loved. In The Artist of the Beautiful, main character, Owen Warland spent many years working to achieve the most beautiful creation he could make. Owen threw away his life and a chance at love just because he became obsessed with achieving the most beautiful creation. Owen later found himself disappointed even
Hawthorne’s juxtaposition of opposites, of “marble and mud” within “The Birthmark” is a contributing factor to the ambiguity within the story. How could someone like Aminadab possibly be working side by side with the intellectual scientist, Aylmer? How can Georgiana proceed with the experimental cure after reading Aylmer’s scientific journal and after witnessing firsthand the failure of the flower and photograph experiments? Peter Conn in “Finding a Voice in an New Nation” makes a statement regarding Hawthorne’s ambiguity: “Almost all of Hawthorne’s finest stories are remote in time or place. The glare of contemporary reality immobilized his imagination. He required shadows and half-light, and he sought a nervous equilibrium in ambiguity” (82).
In his story, “The Birthmark”, Nathaniel Hawthorne foreshadows the fateful death of Georgiana by including a dialogue, in which she tells her husband to do anything he can to remove the birthmark off her face, regardless of the risk saying “Danger is nothing to me; for life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror and disgust, -- life is a burden which I would fling down with joy.” Hawthorne displays Georgianna openly accept the risk of death, which was the consequence. This also is an example of change over time in Hawthorne’s work. Originally, Georgianna saw the birthmark as a positive thing that made her more attractive, as other men loved it. Howbeit, after hearing her Aylmer’s negative opinion on her birthmark,
Becoming consumed by his hatred of Georgiana's birthmark, Aylmer attempts to use his science to remove the flaw. Though Aylmer believes that he is an accomplished scientist, evidence from his workbooks shows that even his “most splendid successes were almost invariably failures, if compared with the ideal at which he aimed” (BM). But despite the evidence which shows that he is not as accomplished of a scientist as he says he is, he continued with the experiment. His obsession of fixing Georgiana’s complexion and ridding her of her birthmark pushes him to experiment on her despite the risks. Unfortunately, because Aylmer did not change or better himself after judging his wife, he continued with the risky procedure which resulted in ending her life. Aylmer was blinded by his obsession with creating the perfect wife to realize that he was actually insecure with his own ability in science. He so badly wanted to prove to the world that he was able to rid his wife of her blemish and reveal her true beauty. Because he was unable to use his judgements to better understand his own true nature, Aylmer destroyed his own chance for
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
Nathaniel Hawthorne did not do much explaining when it came to the characters involved in "The Birthmark". He did not portray the main characters: Aylmer, Georgiana, and Ambidab as human beings, but rather as symbols. While analyzing the story "The Birthmark", I have achieved some great insight of the author 's articulate writing style; especially, his style of making characters have symbolic meaning. In this story, Hawthorne uses his characters to symbolize specific things. In this ambiguous, short story, the three characters each symbolize Science, Beauty, and Nature. Each character represents an unusual force that has equally worked against each other.