The Perception Of A Girl In The Birthmark By Nathaniel Hawthorne

the perception of a girl in terms of a traditional setting by portraying instructions of 

behaviour and responsibility expectations of young ladies by comprising the duties anticipated. 

The story consists of a theme that suggests there is a particular way for women to conduct

themselves, reinforcing the idea of women having to be domestic. This leads to feminism through

the things women are presumed to do for the satisfaction of others, an example of this is, cleaning 
 
the whole house, perhaps looking good while doing so? This is also evident in the story of The 

Birthmark. Hawthorne’s dark romanticism story mainly focuses on his belief of science, nature and 

religion. It illustrates how the attempt of changing a human being to your
It could also be a 

negative influence on the girl. In expansion to that, the words of her mother could be scarred deep 

enough in the daughter’s mind to put her in a state of fear of experiencing the roller-coaster of life. 

In like manner, in The Birthmark, Aylmer’s itch of satisfaction is to make his wife perfect. However, 

that is doomed to failure as, perfection, suggested by Nathaniel, is the province of heaven and not 

found on Earth. Not only did his failure result to the death of Georgiana, but it also ruined Aylmer 

as a husband and scientist, because his desire to make his wife into the way he assumed is ideal, 

became what prevented him from seeing the good in his wife which we learnt from when her little 

flaw grew in his mind and, eventually, took over, making him unable to see the good in his wife. In 

addition to the story Girl, the mother, at the beginning of the story, questions her daughter if it is 

true that she had sung benna(used as a symbol) in Sunday school, this makes the reader think 

that the mother had either heard or was told this from someone. On top of that, it creates the 

question of wether or not the daughter has already turned into the opposite of what her mother 

intended
Parallelism is found as well through 

the sentences beginning with “don’t”(use of anaphora) or “you mustn’t” and then using simple 

imperative verbs or word such as “be sure to” or “always.” Judging by repetition of instructions, and 

the jump of the sentences sometimes being negative and on to positive, makes Girl 

incremental, which confuses the reader and makes it more difficult to understand. In opposition to 

that, Birthmark is more linear than incremental, even though his style of writing is outdated, it is 

simpler and slower to read. This might also be for the reason that we have a narrator, a conflict(not 

being into the birthmark and wanting to remove it) and a plot, unlike in Girl. 

In contrast to the The Birthmark in which we are fed with in depth details of things, like the setting, 

characters, and the mark, as well as an example of imagery, metaphor and allusion in the first 

paragraph of the story where the fie enters the boudoir, the story of Girl lacks description of either 

the setting or characters. However, throughout the story, we are able to hint out for ourselves, for 

example, I puzzled it out by the details supplied in reference to “benna” and “dasteem”. Also 

noticed by things like the food, and having to do the laundry by hand. Kincaid uses the technique of 

allowing the reader to use their