Nature's Mark

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Birthmark” is written in third person omniscient. This means that we the reader are able to see and feel each character’s thoughts and feelings, giving us the full story. Aylmer, the protagonist, is a mad scientist who is overly obsessed with trying to control Nature though his experiments. His wife, Georgiana, is, in Aylmer’s eyes, the perfect woman except for a hand shaped birthmark that resides on her cheek. Throughout the story Aylmer attempts numerous scientific experiments in order to remove Georgiana’s birthmark. In the end, Georgiana’s birthmark is removed, but she dies, and Aylmer is left alone. It is clear in “The Birthmark” that Nature will never be defeated man, no matter how powerful man may seem to be.

We see Aylmer’s disgust for Georgiana’s birthmark early in the story. One day Aylmer decides to ask Georgiana if she had ever thought about removing the birthmark from her cheek. She replies to him, “‘No indeed … To tell you the truth, it has been so often called a charm, that I was simple enough to imagine it might be so’” (212). Georgiana does not see what Aylmer sees about the birthmark because she feels like it sets her apart from the other women, making her special, even in the eyes of men. Also, in the past, some of “Georgiana’s lovers were wont to say that some fairy at her birth-hour had laid her tiny hand upon the infant’s cheek, and left this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were to give her such say over all hearts” (213). Even other men were willing to fight over her just because she had something uniquely and exotically different about her. Other women were jealous of Georgiana’s birthmark and describe it as a “bloody hand” because of the fact that...

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... of warning very early on, even before this story begins, but it is not acknowledged until Aylmer exploits it: “It was the fatal flaw of humanity which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain” (213). This excerpt is foreshadowing at how Aylmer’s plan will ultimately end. By placing this birthmark upon Georgiana’s cheek, Nature is establishing her power of human nature and stating the message that no one in this world is perfect because it is her wish. Everyone will have some flaw associated to them and the only way to undo it is to endure the negative consequences that come along with it. Aylmer sees the birthmark as competition for power, started by Nature, while Nature uses the birthmark as sort of a taunting mechanism.