Essay Sample on Aylmer's Obsession with Perfection: Hawthorne's The Birthmark

Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark” is a writing piece that presents the reader with more questions than answers upon finishing to read it. The main character is Aylmer. He is a brilliant alchemist/scientist who believes nothing a man cannot achieve or master. Aylmer has an obsession with the imperfect birthmark that his wife has. It resembles a hand, and the obsession starts after they get married. He is fixated in the perfection of his wife, Georgina. Aylmer believes that to experience love, he must have the right and the perfect woman to show love. The obsession becomes too much to a point where Georgina is tired (Hawthorne). She tells him, “Remove this dreadful hand or take my wretched life” (Marsh 730). Aylmer assures his wife that he will remove the mark even though there are some risks involved. He wants his wife to be perfect in all ways possible. The ‘perfect elixir’ is thought to be the only thing that will cure and make her perfect. Aylmer delivers the elixir and sees the mark start to disappear. However, his wife tells him that she is dying.

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The only time that Georgina achieved perfection in her husband’s eyes was when she was dying. Nevertheless, Aylmer seems to have achieved what he wanted. Aylmer is a man who loved science more than he could ever love a human. He had insecurities and inadequacies; hence wanted to see perfection in his wife. Georgina found out his leger titled ‘sad confession, and continual exemplification, of the shortcomings of the composite man.’ Despite all these, he seemed to have genuinely loved Georgina and wanted her to be perfect. He destroyed her in his quest for perfection.

Georgina was initially a happy person and believed that she had married a great man up until her husband, Aylmer, told her that she should remove the mark on her cheek. It becomes the beginning of her husband wanting to do away with the one imperfection she had (Fehrle 210). Georgina was loving, loyal, and had an undying desire to please her husband. It is a mark of time. That is, she was ready to die to meet get his approval. She believes her feelings are those of pure love and is unselfish.

The Birthmark portrays an aspect of humans possessing supernatural power of making the imperfect things perfect. Aylmer, a great scientist, does not believe in God and any of his natural laws. In perspective, God created man as part of nature and not be in any way above it but to be integrated within it. This aspect is relevant despite the constant fight about ethical issues concerning the understanding of science versus natural law (Yoshii 68).

The Birth Mark is still relevant today just the same way it was first published in the 19th century. In today’s world, people struggle to keep up with issues such as stem cell research and cloning, and some other scientific aspects that contradict natural laws and God. Hawthorne’s sentiments would probably be the same if confronted with the same issues people deal with today. As much as the hand was just a birthmark, it was also a vital part of Georgina’s soul, and doing away with it to achieve perfection was the cause for her demise. The author portrays that there has to be an imperfection in humanity, at least on physical sense, and it is only through death that one can achieve perfection.

Works Cited

Fehrle, Johannes. “Destined to fail: cosmetic surgery, female body image, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s” The birth-mark”.” The Failed Individual: Amid Exclusion, Resistance, and the Pleasure of Non-Conformity (2017): 99.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Birth-Mark. Scholastic, 2020.

Marsh, Clayton. “Hawthorne’s Distillery: Time and Temperance in “The Birth-Mark” And Other Tales.” American Literature 88.4 (2016): 723-753.

Yoshii, Chiyo. “Humanity as Matter: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Vivacious Materialism in “The Birth-mark” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter”.” Literary Imagination (2020).