Birthmark

The Mark of Ugliness

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Birthmark, there is indeed a representation of a submerged personality in Aylmer. 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 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 portion of the rising action we discover what type of man Aylmer is. He is a man of science, and held with high regards by other scientists. His love for science is first priority; anything else means nothing compared to his studies.Even though he decided to search for a wife, he does so with hardly any enthusiasm, “ He had left his laboratory to the care of his assistant, cleared his fine countenance from the furnace smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers and persuaded a beautiful women to become his wife.” Two points are brought up; first he leaves his assistant in the lab with all the dirty work to be done, while Aylmer cleans himself up and just decides he needs a wife, pointing out that Aminadab, although only an assistant, has a great deal of responsibility. Second due, to his non chalante attitude towards finding a woman, we find that he wonders if he could love a woman more than his science, “ His love for his young wife might prove the stronger of the two; but it could only be by intertwining itself with his love of science and uniting the strength of the latter of his own.” Right then we see he could not marry and be truly in love unless he could some how combine it with his science.

Luckily for Aylmer, he discovers a birthmark on his wife that makes him look at his wife in disgust. The birthmark which he calls a flaw to perfection, becomes more intolerable after every glance at it. He can not ignore...

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... of time,and,living once all in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.” Basically saying the missing part of him, which was shown through Aminadab, was the key to see that he had everything he could possibly want. That is when he no longer fights with this inner struggle. What is even more tragic is that even with the passing of his wife, he is unable to learn from this expierence because his own wife basically says, dont feel guilty it is going to be ok. This totally disturbs the possiblility of learning from this horrible incident, because his wife eases the guilt.

Aylmer doesnot incorporate his missing characteristics from Aminadab. Although if he would have he would have been able to totally appreciate his wife, and even if he would have portrayed Aminadab’s way of thinking even at the end when she dies he could have learned at least the hard way. But the fact that he did not even learn anything from this expieerence and still has a seperation within himself is the saddest part. If only he had the mentality of his counterpart Aminadab, he wold have realized his wife, Georgiana was in fact a beautiful creature who need not be changed.