The Absolute Power of Men in a Patriarchal Society

When he urged his wife to remove the birthmark that represents her sexuality as a women, he is simultaneously taking away Georgiana’s existence as a woman.

Woman’s in the eighteenth century are not highly praised for their education. From story of “The Birthmark”, it is quite obvious that Georgiana is not just an educated woman but also an intelligent person. As it was mentioned in the story, “To dispel the tedium of hours which her husband found it necessary to devote to the processes of combination and analysis, Georgiana turned over the volumes of his scientific library”(297). She was able to read and understand the work of many philosophers of the Middle Ages such as Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa, and Paracelsus. Her ability to interpret these complicated philosophy books is enough to demonstrate the fact that she is an highly intelligent woman. In the library, she also found records of his husband’s experiments. Not surprisingly, she was able to understand every single one of her husband’s experiment including the data, procedure, analysis and the result her husband has record. However, even though she is a highly educated and intelligent woman, her intelligence has never been acclaimed in the story. In contrast, Alymer was often regarded as “a man of science”, “Brilliant scientist”, or “Powerful intellect” by others. Only man’s talents and abilities would be recognized by the society which once again shows the domination of masculine power.

When women are married in the eighteenth century, their world revolves around no one else but their husband. Submissive wives were considered as a sign of good wives during the bygone era. Georgiana is a perfect example of a submissive wife of her time. She was both mentally ...

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...e into loving her husband. Women in the eighteenth century choose to obey everything their husband said, they voluntarily bow to power of their men because of love.

Georgiana’s death at the end of “The Birthmark” warns people the dangerousness of overwhelmed masculine power. With the absolute power resting on men’s hands, they can do almost everything they want to their wives. Nonetheless, this kind of abusive power could end up in tragedy. Throughout the story, Alymer was trying to erase the birthmark on his wife’s cheek regardless of the price it might takes. Eventually, he ended up paying for the abusive masculine power he used to control his wife. A prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter once said, “have no fear of perfection, you will never reach it.” If people do not know how to stay content with what they have, they will eventually lose everything.