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The Birth Mark by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Introduction

The Birth Mark is a book written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is one of the best stories from the collection “Mosses from an Old Manse”. This story revolves around two main characters; Georgiana, the wife and Aylmer, her husband. Georgiana was a very beautiful woman with a birth mark on her face, which everyone use to find very attractive. But her husband never found it attractive and considered it imperfection. His perception of Georgiana as flawed destroys her self-confidence and she begins to see herself as unattractive, as well. He had confident in his power, and wanted to remove that birth mark from her face (Hawthorne, pp.16-25). He convinced her to allow him to remove that birth mark. He was more into the physical beauty instead of admiring the utter goodness of his wife. He took his wife to the laboratory which had beautiful rooms designed for patients to relax, and to mesmerize them. Aylmer ultimately succeeded in removing the birth mark, but Georgiana's predicted dream died (Perry, pp.84-96). The Birthmark eventually valorizes natural beauty, which might contain deficiency, over the ideal beauty shaped by art or science; explores the hubris of art and science in challenging to perfect what nature provides; also reveals a charm and discomfort with the power of women's sexuality, which might cause a man do anything, including endangering a woman's life, to reduce it. This story very beautifully expresses the feelings and the tragedy of Georgiana's death because of her husband.

Theme of “The Birth Mark”

Theme is the most important part before writing any story. The story has to revolve around the theme that has been decided for any story. This gives a path to the author to write the story without going out of track. Same case was with this story, “The Birth Mark”, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This is one of his best short story collections. He gave a proper theme to this story then started writing about it.

The theme of the book “The Birth Mark” is based on romance and outer beauty. Outer beauty means, the physical beauty. It also revolves around, the selfishness of the husband and faithfulness of his wife. In this story, Georgiana is a beautiful woman but with a red birth mark on her cheek. Though a lot of men find it very attractive, still her husband did not like it and considered it as imperfection in beauty (Sterling, pp. 174). As the theme, of the story has faith in it, the role of the wife is very faithful. She wants to make her husband happy, that was the reason she agreed on the plastic surgery. Though this surgery was not safe, and her husband knew it, he still went for it and it leads to the loss of life. The Birth Mark has all the moments, from romance to betraying. Aylmer; the husband, was so selfish that he killed his wife through a surgery just for his happiness and arrogance. ...