like the supernatural, suspense, horror, and mystery. Although some critics consider the Gothic a more sensational and lurid form of romanticism, I think the Gothic actually highlights the darker side of romantic principles. We can see this at work inNathaniel Hawthorne's "The Birthmark" (1843). One of the key principles of romanticism is "idealism." However, when taken to an extreme, idealism can become unhinged narcissism, as we see in the case of the genius scientist Aylmer. Striving for the ideal of perfection, Aylmer is ready to sacrifice human life itself. Ironically, in his love for nature, Aylmer sets out to perfect and thus destroy it. Thus, the Gothic acts as a warning for the romantic tendency of excess.

Looking further into the "The Birthmark," we can spot many other elements of the Gothic in play. For instance, the story is not set in the present-day but in "the latter part of the last century," or in a romanticized past—as is typical of works in Gothic literature. The setting too is dark and mysterious in the form of Aylmer's laboratory, the innermost reaches of which are forbidden to his young wife:

The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that hot and feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which by the quantities of soot clustered above it seemed to have been burning for ages. There was a distilling apparatus in full operation. Around the room were retorts, tubes, cylinders, crucibles, and other apparatus of chemical research. An electrical machine stood ready for immediate use. The atmosphere felt oppressively close, and was tainted with gaseous odors which had been tormented forth by the processes of science.

The names Aylmer and Aminadab (his servant) with their strange and "exotic" tones are very much in the Gothic tradition, as is the otherworldly description of Aminadab: "With his vast strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the indescribable earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent man's physical nature."

The supernatural is provided in the form of Aylmer's labors, which lie somewhere between science and alchemy, and in the form of the mysterious birthmark on Georgiana's cheek, which grows to be so much more than a tiny patch of hyper-pigmented skin. The fact that it is mysteriously shaped like a hand is also important, symbolizing the hand of destiny or doom, whichever way you prefer to look at it.

By placing the story in a recent past, Hawthorne could distance it from some of the scientific achievements of his time and deliberately allow room for the elements of the supernatural and alchemy to creep in. Aylmer's figure is closer to someone like Faustus in Christopher Marlow's Dr Faustus (1592), who was also a man of science but given to means which may be extra-scientific. However, one critical difference between Faustus and Aylmer is that Faustus puts his own soul at stake whereas Aylmer is ready to gamble away his wife. This brings us to our second point, which is examining Romantic feminism in "The Birthmark."

Whereas "feminism" in its contemporary sense as a political and philosophical movement may not exist in Romanticism, one of the key aspects of Romantic literature was closer attention to individual liberties. Women's liberties as individuals were also gaining importance within the Romantic tradition. With more emphasis on the individual and her feelings, women's subjectivity started taking center-stage in many Romantic works. Since Romanticism is iconoclastic, power dynamics (including gender dynamics) were examined more closely in Romantic literature and art.

Significantly, one of the early works of romanticism was A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), written by the activist Mary Wollstonecraft. Her daughter Mary Shelley would go on to write the wildly successful novel Frankenstein (1818)—another important work of Romantic literature, and one which greatly influenced "The Birthmark." In the "Birthmark," the husband is trying to "improve" his young wife's appearance to suit his idea of perfect beauty by erasing the birthmark on her cheek. As a representative of the institution of patriarchy, he cannot bear the distinguishing mark, which is a sign of her individual female self. Disturbed by her individuality, he tries to subdue it to fit a cookie-cutter mold of his liking.

Aylmer's male narcissism makes him feel he deserves perfection because he is great. Furthermore, like a true patriarch, he acts as the gatekeeper to knowledge: he flies off into a rage when Georgiana breaches his all-male bastion of the innermost laboratory. He is also displeased when she reads some of his writings—the conjunction of a woman accessing knowledge and peeking into his vulnerability disturb him:

"It is dangerous to read in a sorcerer's books," said he with a smile, though his countenance was uneasy and displeased. "Georgiana, there are pages in that volume which I can scarcely glance over and keep my senses. Take heed lest it prove as detrimental to you."

Aylmer also gradually subsumes Georgiana's identity. In the beginning she is angry at his distaste of her birthmark, crying out:

Shocks you, my husband!...Then why did you take me from my mother's side? You cannot love what shocks you!

However, as the story progresses, he wears her down, and she acquiesces to his experimentation, filled with foreboding that things will not end well for her. At this point, Georgiana is less of a human being and more of a project to her husband Aylmer, who is a symbol of male dominance and of institutionalized science.

Although some critics rightly point out that Georgiana is treated as a passive victim in the story, "The Birthmark" is both a stunning indictment of patriarchy as well as a romantic assertion of the individual: crush the individual and all you reap is disaster, it seems to say.

"The Birthmark" features two big themes of the Romantic movement as a whole: a reverence for the natural world and a reverence for the individual.

Georgiana is the biggest symbol of the Romantic outlook. She is sweet and good at heart, as well as physically gorgeous; her only "flaw" in the eyes of her husband, Aylmer, is the birthmark on her face. By ridding Georgiana of her birthmark, Aylmer is infringing upon what makes her special, her individuality. By removing this symbol of individuality, he is killing what makes her her, essentially. By trying to make her perfect, Aylmer has killed the very person he loves. After all, perfection does not exist in the natural world. This provides us with a segue into the other Romantic theme of the story.

Man seeks to control nature, just as Aylmer wants to make Georgiana's natural birthmark vanish. However, Romantics believe that this is futile, as nature always wins in the end. And in this case, nature does win, since Georgiana's birthmark is nature's work, and she cannot continue to live once Aylmer gives her the potion to rid herself of it.

In Hawthorne's short story, "The Birthmark," we are presented with the character of Georgiana, a beautiful woman married to a brilliant scientist. The only impediment, in Aylmer's mind (the husband) is that his wife has a birthmark on her cheek. Whereas Georgiana had thought it was a "charm" that she was born with:

To tell you the truth it has been so often called a charm that I was simple enough to imagine it might be so.

Other suitors felt that it somehow separated her from the masses—made her more alluring—while Aylmer sees it simply as an imperfection.

The story, then, is about Aylmer's insistence that the birthmark should be removed to make his wife "perfect."

"Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject," hastily interrupted Aylmer. "I am convinced of the perfect practicability of its removal."

The themes presented in the story include what is real and what is ideal, and which is better. Where Georgiana was perfectly happy as she was, her husband finally convinces her that she must have the mark removed.

"If there be the remotest possibility of it," continued Georgiana, "let the attempt be made at whatever risk. Danger is nothing to me; for life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror and disgust..."

In a sense, she is giving away the essence of herself, sacrificing it to his perception of perfection. There is no such thing as perfection, and so Aylmer is pursuing an ideal, a dream; he loses sight of the beauty of the woman he is married to, concentrating not on who she is and how lucky he is to have her. He is unsatisfied and ends up sacrificing her life for something as elusive as a dream.

Another theme here—which would speak to the age old battle between the value and evil of science, as opposed to the pure essence of nature—is found in the conflict of science vs. nature. Like a god, Aylmer sees himself as one who borders on the divine. Where only God through nature can create a true thing of beauty, this intellectual, arrogant man believes he has the power through the power of his mind and science to "fix" what nature has "messed up."

Another theme may be that one must look within to find beauty and acceptance, and resist the temptation to listen to others who think they know what is best and right for someone else. Being unique, by definition, describes something or someone is like no other. Why is it, then, that so many things in society—advertisers for make-up, hair color and toothpaste, as well as a youngster's peers or an adult's friends—feel the need to fix what is not broken?

According to critics of the story, the birthmark could be a symbol of "God's blessing" or the devil's curse. This is a point that critics cannot agree upon. However, I find that it is symbolic of Georgiana's individuality. Aylmer perceives it as something loathsome—and sadly, eventually it is not only Aylmer that sees it as a gross imperfection, but Georgiana comes to believe it as well.

To focus this question on the story "The Birthmark," you can certainly see the influence of both the gothic and Romantic traditions in Hawthorne's writing. In fact, these influences are present to such an extent that this story can be classified as representative of both these genres.

Romanticism was first and foremost centered around the expression of intense emotions and emotional turbulence, and this quality is certainly strongly expressed in Hawthorne's story. The character of Aylmer is someone consumed by his obsession, fixated on his wife's birthmark and his desire to eliminate it, to such a point that he ultimately destroys her in the pursuit of that goal. Meanwhile, there is an ambiguity in Hawthorne's depiction of science: even as Aylmer is called a scientist, he has much more in common with an alchemist or magician, and in this too, Hawthorne's story can be classified as gothic and Romantic. Aylmer is not, to the slightest degree, a scientist in the modern sense of the word.

I would say these same qualities would qualify the story as gothic: particularly Hawthorne's focus on the occult, with his depiction of Aylmer as a magician. In addition, it is also worth discussing the image of the doomed Georgiana, whom Aylmer kills in his quest for perfection. This sense of tragedy in connection to its female lead character is one of the hallmarks of the gothic genre, one often seen, for example, with authors such as Poe.

Somewhat ironically, even though Nathaniel Hawthorne's story “The Birthmark” is all about a scientist, it is filled with elements of romanticism, including the focus on the individual, a strong sense of emotion, elements of irrationality and melancholy, an emphasis on beauty, and even a Gothic twist. Let's look at examples of each of these.

The story focuses on the scientist Aylmer who has married a woman named Georgiana. Georgiana, he thinks, is perfect, except for a red birthmark on her cheek. Most people have thought the birthmark to be charming, but it appalls Aylmer to the point that he wants to remove it. In the end he does, but at a shocking cost.

We can see, then, a focus on individuals here with Aylmer and Georgiana. Aylmer, however, is mostly focused on himself. It is his opinion that he thinks matters, and eventually Georgiana becomes convinced that her beauty has been marred by the mark. Emotions run high, but they are irrational, especially on Aylmer's part. The narrator calls Georgiana's birthmark “a red jewel on a white stone,” suggesting that the mark is actually a part of her beauty rather than a flaw.

Aylmer, though, refuses to accept it, and the mark bothers him so much and makes him so melancholy that Georgiana agrees to his plans to remove it that he might make her “perfect.” He uses strong chemicals in the process, never fully considering the harm they might cause. He is convinced of his own power (notice the individualism again).

Aylmer takes on the role of something of a mad scientist as the story goes on, willing to try anything and everything to rid his wife of the mark. Herein likes the Romantic Gothic. Finally, Aylmer attains success. The mark is gone. His wife is totally beautiful. But she is also dead, and he is plunged into a deeper melancholy than ever, realizing too late that his wife was perfectly beautiful all along.