Preview

Beauty In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Birthmark

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
328 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Beauty In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Birthmark
Beauty is the eyes of the beholder. One man’s beauty can be misery for another. For perfectionists it can be difficult to find the perfection. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark” is a story of a couple’s foolish search for perfection which ends with a tragedy. Georgiana, who is the victim of god’s small mistake, is one of the main characters in the story. On the outside, she looked so in love with her husband that she was able to give up her life to satisfy him. On the inside, she was an egotistical woman who wanted everyone to admit that she was the true definition of beauty.

All her life she had thought that her lovers found the crimson hand to be a charm. She had thought she was beautiful and the birthmark only added to her beauty.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In "The Birth-Mark" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author floods the story with many forms of symbolism to show there is no true form of perfection on earth. Although trying to accomplish such a thing, Aylmer not only highlights his failures as a scientist, but also kills his beautiful wife. After many nights of gazing upon his wife's porcelain face, slaying her heart with his disgusted looks, Aylmer convinces his wife Georgiana to let him conduct an experiment on the hand-shaped, rosy birthmark she flaunted upon her cheek, to remove such flaw and achieve pure perfection on earth. Within Aylmer's laboratory exists two contrasting rooms that display not only the workplace for the grungy men, but the heavenly boudoir of which his wife so pleasently…

    • 265 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    However, this mark represents much more than a cosmetic disfigurement. It represents the imperfection we strive to eliminate everyday. This is proven because Georgiana never thought of her birthmark as such a horrible thing until Aylmer pointed it out, then she wanted nothing more than for it to be removed. Also, as Aylmer tries everything to eliminate the mark it shows humanity’s obsession of trying anything and everything to achieve perfection, even if it means certain death.…

    • 487 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    A short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Birthmark”, is a short story about a newly married couple and the husband becomes obsessed with his wife’s birthmark. The birthmark is a symbol in the text. The text reads as follows “The crimson hand expressed the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest, and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death” (Booth 215 ). Hawthorne is telling us the readers that love is not perfect using the symbol as the birthmark itself. The husband, Alymer wants to control nature to try to fix this birthmark , but in all reality it is his insecurity. Alymer wants perfection in his wife and this perfection does not exist.…

    • 561 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    There are several feats that one can accomplish in life that set him or her apart from other individuals. When thinking of specific “feats” that a person can achieve, several sports records come to mind. Someone can have the most touchdowns in football, score the most points in basketball, or score the most goals in soccer or hockey. However, records like these pale in comparison to pitching a perfect game. There’s something about retiring 27 batters in a row that astounds us to the point that unknown pitchers who throw perfect games essentially become baseball icons. But the human preoccupation with perfection exists outside of baseball. In The Birthmark, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the theme of human imperfection is present in the ideas of mortality, science versus nature, and…

    • 847 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The most significant symbols in his story include the names representing the characters, young goodman Brown, and his wife, Faith. Both represent their given names, but also symbolizes the moral belief young goodman Brown holds in his heart.…

    • 421 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the story “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, science versus nature is an essential source of conflict. This theme becomes apparent through Alymer’s persistent desire to interfere with what is natural through his passion for science. This obsession becomes most apparent when Alymer attempts to change his wife Georgiana’s natural appearance. Soon after marrying her, Alymer is shocked by the smallest of imperfection, and expresses desire to remove it, as a result having control over nature. This drive to remove what is natural is what results in the death of his wife. In doing so, Alymer, being a man of science, struggles with nature. In “The Birthmark”, through, Alymer’s attempt to manipulate what…

    • 873 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Birth-Mark

    • 610 Words
    • 3 Pages

    No one is born perfect, but yet everyone has the desire to be. In the story "The Birth-Mark" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the main character's wife, Georgiana, sets out to be perfect. The narrator introduces Georgiana's husband, Aylmer, as a brilliant man of science. After Aylmer and Georgiana got married, Aylmer quit his experiments for a while until he found his next project which was Georgiana's birth-mark. One day, Aylmer questions Georgiana about the birthmark on her face and from that point on he is fixated on removing it. At first Georgiana does not have the desire to remove, what she once calls a charm until Aylmer persistently puts her down about it. Aylmer tells Georgiana that he has a potion that would effectively remove her birth-mark.…

    • 610 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Aylmer’s wife is a beautiful woman with pale white skin. Georgiana’s nearly perfect beauty is flawed with the hand on her cheek. It is a birthmark deeply interwoven within her face. It is in the shape of a tiny hand, such as one…

    • 1168 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    "The Birthmark" by Hawthorne is a short fiction that warns readers to take a second thought towards pursuing physical perfection. Throughout the story, Hawthorne uses a great deal of symbolism. These symbols in Hawthorne's "Birthmark" not only foreshadow the outcome of the story but also reinforce the theme significantly. The birthmark in the story is a tiny, hand-shaped imperfection on Georgiana's cheek. This tiny mark on Georgiana's cheek may seem to be charming by others. However, to her husband, Aylmer, the birthmark is far from charming. In fact, it is perceived as a "crimson hand"(329) that lures him into destruction. By trying to manipulate Georgiana's natural beauty with science, Aylmer acts as a devil and brings Georgiana to the end…

    • 837 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Has time changed over several years or do we still think the same? Are imperfections worse on the physical being of a person or the inner soul? Physical attributes were as much important hundreds of years as now. Becoming obsessed and uncomfortable with the way one looks has given scientist a way to mold perfection. Is it worse changing to please ourselves because we need to or doing it to please our significant other because he has become so consumed with perfection, vanity and defects? How is it that one criticizes others small imperfections and not notice how they themselves look and how "the hand of nature" has not been so generous to them either. Inner beauty, is not seen but felt; perfection is not the same…

    • 845 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Symbolism In The Birthmark

    • 1103 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In Hawthorne's short story, "The Birthmark," he examines that nature is supposed to be imperfect and cannot be changed. Hawthorne's main character, Aylmer is a static and stock character who does not change and is a mad scientist. He is determined to remove his wive's birthmark and is in denial that nature is imperfect and not everything can be changed. Hawthorne examines the theme that nature is supposed to be imperfect he shows it through Aylmers thoughts about how nature works. Aylmer is a part of nature himself and tries to achieve perfection by making his wife perfect and removing the birthmark. Lastly, Hawthorne uses symbolism to once again portray that nature cannot be changed and it is meant to be imperfect. The dream Aylmer has a deception…

    • 1103 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Hawthorne uses symbol, opposition, and characters as a part to portray a message for us. He wants us to see the birthmark itself on a more abstract scale, and to portray important life lessons about the nature of humanity, human nature, personal faultiness, and how we think as well as the soul. The Birthmark is bringing up a topic that is relevant to the society we are living in today, where many things are under experimentation because of the developments within science. However, in the end, there is something about human nature that not even science can change, namely the…

    • 795 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The relentless pursuit of human perfection has always been an intrinsic trait of human nature and science has been a mean to achieve it. This statement brings us to the main idea of Hawthorne 's short story "The Birth-mark." It shows the story of a scientist who is obsessed with the removal of his wife 's birthmark, considering it a symbol of her human imperfection. "The Birth-mark" is possibly influenced by Hawthorne 's times where science began to gain knowledge about our world and was considerably glorified, through scientific experiment, humankind can discover, know, and do just about anything. As the narrator explains, “In those days when…

    • 1490 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The style of The Scarlet Letter is clean, precise, and effective. In the novel Hawthorne…

    • 601 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Aylmer sees Georgiana’s birthmark as a symbol of human imperfection, which results in hi insatiable desire to perfect her. Tensions grew strong between the two and their marriage slowly began to suffer. One night, Aylmer dreamed that he had surgically removed the birthmark on Georgiana’s cheek and he goes on to explain to her this dream. The more he cut into her birthmark, the deeper the birthmark went until it led to Georgiana’s very heart. He kept cutting and cutting until he cut through her heart to completely remove the birthmark. Once Georgiana hears this dream, she became infatuated with removing her birthmark so she could be perfect for her husband.…

    • 1116 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays