The Birth-Mark
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"The Birth-Mark" (1843) is a romantic short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It examines the obsession of human perfection. Georgiana, the beautiful woman in the story has a single hand-shaped birthmark on her cheek. Men are invariably attracted to Georgiana, and many find the birthmark attractive. However, her husband Aylmer, a scientist, is revolted at the sight of the birthmark. He views it as the sole flaw of his otherwise perfect wife and becomes obsessed with it.
Eventually Georgiana comes to share his obsession, and the couple decides to try to remove the birthmark. Aylmer takes Georgiana to his laboratory, where he is assisted by his assistant Aminadab. Aminadab helps with the operation, although he mutters to himself that if Georgiana were his wife, he would not want the birthmark removed. Aylmer takes several days to perform tests on Georgiana and analyze her "condition", but only prepares one liquid for her consumption. Once she drinks this, the birthmark, which is referred to as the bond that tied together her heavenly spirit with her near-perfect body, fades -- but so does her spirit. Aylmer achieves his one moment of perfection, which Hawthorne had alluded to by centering Georgiana's thoughts about how Aylmer could only have one moment of perfection, because in the next moment he would already be striving for "something that was beyond the scope of the instant before" (Hawthorne)
Some critics contend that the theme of the story is that human perfection can only be achieved in death and therefore not reachable at all, in that the trademark foreshadowing occurred during Aylmer's dream, in which he can not cut deep enough to remove the birthmark.
Other critics read the story as a critique of 19th century positivistic science (positivism) situating the woman as nature and representing science as attempting to penetrate her/its secrets while ultimately destroying the object of its research. Still others see it as a defence of vitalism as against materialism -- that one cannot find the essence or soul in mute bodily matter.
