The Birthmark Symbolism

As the years pass, we begin to forget the little insignificant things while keeping the memories that somehow evolutionarily change our outlook or emphasizes it. The Birth-Mark, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a story that dramatizes the very thing I despise, which is when men objectify women. “A man of science,” Aylmer, could not see his wife’s birthmark as a “charm” but as a symbol of imperfection while her admirers dreamed of the chance to lay their lips upon Georgiana’s hand-shaped charm. Aylmer’s fixation of perfection caused him to lose his wife entirely due to a tiny reminder of her humanity. Five years and many more down the road, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story, The Birth-Mark, will be memorable due to its condescending view of women presented

A little hand-shaped birthmark on Georgiana’s left cheek brought the previously happy couple into turmoil. Georgiana’s admirers saw her birthmark as a charm, giving her a uniqueness that other women would die for. But with each cringing look from her husband Georgiana would fall into a deeper depression and finally causing her to give in to her husband’s wishes of attempting to remove the “grotesque” birth-mark. This brings light to how men can be so manipulative and lack the sense of sympathy towards women, in this case in own wife. Which brings the question as to why Aylmer would take Georgiana “from her mother’s side” and becoming fixated with removing the very thing that separates her from perfection. Aylmer told her verbatim that she “came so close to being perfect,” when her imperfections should be overlooked if he truly loved her. It cost Georgiana her life for him to finally realize that she was everything to him and there was not a thing to “fix” but his fixation of

But many women cannot realize it due to the male dominance in society, which has improved from ancient eras but still continue today in everyday living around the world. Women find the need to seek perfection, like Aylmer, and go through painful procedures like liposuction and botox to feel beautiful and accepted. Tragically many teenage girls end up cutting their lives short due to the emphasized perfect body advertised in everyday social media by subjecting themselves to diet pills and dangers fad diets to satisfy the erg to fit in. Having the same deadly fate as Georgiana did when she subjected herself to her husband’s wishes. Not that women should not do those things, but they should do it for the right reasons. Reasons like self-satisfaction, not in the hopes of getting more male attention and societal acceptance. The second Georgiana succumbed to the weight of her husband’s judgmental stares is when she unintentionally signed her own death certificate. Ultimately death was more appealing to Georgiana then living with a man who is unappreciative of her existence and feels irrelevant in the eyes of her chosen