The Psychological Importance Of Sexual Relations In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Birthmark

You know that tan you've been working on all summer? That would have been the height of tacky during most of human history (okay, sometimes it’s still tacky). If you could afford to not be outside working the fields and getting a great farmer's tan, you stayed inside. And stayed pale. And if you couldn't do it naturally, you faked that pale skin with poisonous titanium paint.

Aylmer is a brilliant and recognized scientist and philosopher who has dropped his focus from his career and experiments to marry the beautiful Georgiana who is physically perfect except for a small red birthmark in the shape of a hand on her cheek. As the story progresses, Aylmer becomes unnaturally obsessed with the birthmark on Georgiana's cheek. One night, he dreams of cutting the birthmark out of his wife's cheek (removing it like scraping the skin from an apple) and then continuing all the way to her heart. He does not remember this dream until Georgiana asks about what his sleep-talking meant. When Aylmer remembers the details of his dream, Georgiana declares that she would risk her life having the birthmark removed from her cheek rather than to continue to endure Aylmer's horror and distress that comes upon him when he sees her.
The birthmark does not become an issue to Aylmer until after the marriage, which he suddenly sees as sexual: "now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now stealing forth again, and glimmering to-and-fro with every pulse of emotion". The story emphasizes the husband's sexual guilt disguised as superficial cosmetology. This type of story has biblical symmetry to Jesus's "Sermon on the Mount." In Matthew 7:3, Christ is quoted as saying, "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own