The Birthmark | Overview

Published in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s collection Mosses From an Old Manse, “The Birthmark,” using the third-person-omniscient point of view, tells the story of a beautiful woman, Georgiana, whose face is imprinted with a pale red birthmark in the shape of a small hand, and her husband, Aylmer, a scientist, who possesses a high degree “of faith in man’s ultimate control over Nature.” Georgiana had thought her mark to be a sort of “charm,” and men in the past had found it enchanting, suggesting a sexual symbolism. Aylmer, however, considers it an imperfection and, confident in his power over nature, wants to remove it from her face. He persuades her to allow him to remove it, even after he reveals his frightening dream that he must carve down to her heart to do so, because she feels they cannot be happy together unless the birthmark is gone. While they both admire perfection, she understands it in spiritual terms while Aylmer reduces it to the physical, not comprehending the utter goodness of his wife and taking full advantage of his ability to dominate her. Guiding her to his laboratory, which includes beautiful rooms designed to relax and perhaps mesmerize her, Aylmer ultimately succeeds in removing the birthmark, but Georgiana, as the dream foretold, dies. “The Birthmark” ultimately valorizes “natural” beauty, which might contain imperfections, over the “ideal” beauty created by art or science; explores the hubris of art and science in attempting to perfect what nature provides; and also reveals a fascination and discomfort with the power of women’s sexuality, which might cause a man do anything, including jeopardizing a woman’s life, to diminish it.