Birthmark Essay Words | 3 Pages. destroy his ability to perceive nature’s beauty. In this text, Georgiana and her birthmark represent nature, and culture is represented by Aylmer. Culture has taught men to question the flaws of women that they once found intriguing, therefore Aylmer is challenging nature when he tries to remove it The Birthmark Essay: The Theme Words | 9 Pages “The Birthmark” – The Theme In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tale, “The Birthmark,” the dominant theme is love conquering self, though there is also present the theme of alienation resulting from the evil within mankind. This essay intends to explore, exemplify and develop this topic Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story The Birthmark is the story of how one man’s obsession killed his wife. Aylmer is a man of science and the husband of Georgiana. Georgiana is absolutely perfect in Aylmer’s eyes, except for the birthmark on her cheek in the shape of a tiny hand. His obsession of her birthmark drives [ ]
Birthmark Essays: Examples, Topics, Titles, & Outlines
it is an expository essay The expository essay the birthmark essay a genre of essay that requires the student to investigate an idea, evaluate evidence, expound on the idea, and set forth an argument concerning that idea in a clear and concise manner.
Thank you! In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual affinity more attractive than any chemical one. He had left his laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance from the furnace smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers, and persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife.
In those days when the comparatively recent discovery of electricity and other kindred mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of miracle, the birthmark essay, it was not unusual for the love of science to rival the love of woman in its depth and absorbing energy.
The higher intellect, the imagination, the spirit, and even the heart might all find their congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries believed, would ascend from one step of powerful intelligence to another, the birthmark essay, until the philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of creative force and perhaps make new worlds for himself. We know the birthmark essay whether Aylmer possessed this degree of faith in man's ultimate control over Nature.
He had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies ever to be weaned from them by any second passion. His love for his young wife might prove the stronger of the two; but it could only be by intertwining itself with his love of science, and uniting the strength of the latter to his own, the birthmark essay. Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly remarkable consequences and a deeply impressive moral. One day, very soon after their marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife with a trouble in his countenance that grew stronger until he spoke.
No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly imperfection. You cannot love what shocks you! In the usual state of her complexion--a healthy though delicate bloom--the mark wore a tint of deeper crimson, which imperfectly defined its shape amid the surrounding rosiness.
When she blushed it gradually became more indistinct, and finally vanished amid the triumphant rush of blood that bathed the whole cheek with its brilliant glow. But if any shifting motion caused her to turn pale there was the mark again, a crimson stain upon the snow, in what Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fearful distinctness, the birthmark essay. Its shape bore not a little similarity to the human hand, though of the smallest pygmy size. Georgiana's the birthmark essay were wont to say that some fairy at her birth hour had laid her tiny hand upon the infant's cheek, and left this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were to give her such sway over all hearts, the birthmark essay.
Many a desperate swain would have risked life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious hand. It must not be concealed, however, that the impression wrought by this fairy sign manual varied exceedingly, according to the difference of temperament in the beholders.
Some fastidious persons--but they were exclusively of her own sex--affirmed that the bloody hand, as they chose to call it, quite destroyed the effect of Georgiana's beauty, and rendered her countenance even hideous. But it would be as reasonable to say that one of those small blue stains which sometimes occur in the purest statuary marble would convert the Eve of Powers to a monster.
Masculine observers, if the birthmark did not heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal loveliness without the semblance of a flaw. After his marriage,--for he thought little or nothing of the matter before,--Aylmer discovered that this was the case with himself.
Had she been less beautiful,--if Envy's self could have found aught the birthmark essay to sneer at,--he might have felt his affection heightened by the prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of emotion that throbbed within her heart; but seeing her otherwise so perfect, he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with every moment of their united lives.
It was the fatal flaw of humanity which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The birthmark essay 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 the birthmark essay 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, Aylmer's sombre imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark a frightful object, causing him more trouble and horror than ever Georgiana's beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given him delight.
At all the seasons which should have been their happiest, he invariably and without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose to the contrary, reverted to this one disastrous topic.
Trifling as it at first appeared, it so connected itself with innumerable trains of thought and modes of feeling that it became the central point of all. With the morning twilight Aylmer opened his eyes upon his wife's face and recognized the symbol of imperfection; and when they sat together at the evening hearth his eyes wandered stealthily to her cheek, and beheld, flickering with the blaze of the wood fire, the spectral hand that wrote mortality where he would fain have worshipped.
The birthmark essay soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It needed but a glance with the peculiar expression that his face often wore to change the roses of her cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the crimson hand was brought strongly out, like a bass-relief of ruby on the whitest marble.
Late one night when the lights were growing dim, so as hardly to betray the stain on the poor wife's cheek, she herself, for the first time, voluntarily took up the subject. none whatever! I wonder that you can forget it.
Is it possible to forget this one expression? Aylmer now remembered his dream. He had fancied himself with his servant Aminadab, attempting an operation for the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the deeper sank the hand, the birthmark essay, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have caught hold of Georgiana's heart; whence, however, her husband was inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away, the birthmark essay.
When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer the birthmark essay in his wife's presence with a guilty feeling, the birthmark essay. The birthmark essay often finds its way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practise an unconscious self-deception during our waking moments.
Until now he had not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go for the sake of giving himself peace. Perhaps its removal may cause cureless deformity; or it may be the stain goes as deep as life itself. Again: do we know that there is a possibility, on any terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this little hand which was laid upon me before I came into the world? Danger is nothing to me; for life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror and disgust,--life is a burden which I would fling down with joy.
Either remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life! You have deep science. All the world bears witness of it, the birthmark essay. You have achieved great wonders. Cannot you remove this little, little mark, which I cover with the tips of two small fingers?
Is this beyond your power, for the sake of your own peace, and to save your poor wife from madness? I have already given this matter the deepest thought--thought which might almost have enlightened me to create a being less perfect than yourself.
Georgiana, you have led me deeper than ever into the heart of science. I feel myself fully competent to render this dear cheek as faultless as its fellow; and then, most beloved, what will be my triumph when I shall have corrected what Nature left imperfect in her fairest work!
Even Pygmalion, when his sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will be. The next day Aylmer apprised his wife of a plan that he had formed whereby he might have opportunity for the intense thought and constant watchfulness which the proposed operation would require; while Georgiana, likewise, would enjoy the perfect repose essential to its success.
They were to seclude themselves in the the birthmark essay apartments occupied by Aylmer as a laboratory, and where, the birthmark essay, during his toilsome youth, he had made discoveries in the elemental powers of Nature that had roused the admiration of all the learned societies in Europe. Seated calmly in this laboratory, the pale philosopher had investigated the secrets of the highest cloud region and of the profoundest mines; he had satisfied himself of the causes that kindled and kept alive the fires of the volcano; and had explained the mystery of fountains, and how it is that they gush forth, some so bright and pure, the birthmark essay, and others with such rich medicinal virtues, from the dark bosom of the earth.
Here, too, at an earlier period, he had studied the wonders of the human frame, and attempted to fathom the very process by which Nature assimilates all her precious influences from earth and air, and from the spiritual the birthmark essay, to create and foster man, her masterpiece. The latter pursuit, the birthmark essay, however, Aylmer had long laid aside in unwilling recognition of the truth--against which all seekers sooner or later stumble--that our great creative Mother, while she amuses us with apparently the birthmark essay in the broadest sunshine, is yet severely careful to keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her pretended openness, shows us nothing but results.
She permits us, indeed, the birthmark essay mar, but seldom to mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on no account to make. Now, however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten investigations; not, the birthmark essay, of course, with such hopes or wishes as first suggested them; but because they involved much physiological truth and lay in the path of his proposed scheme for the treatment of Georgiana.
As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory, Georgiana was cold and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with intent to reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow of the birthmark upon the whiteness of her cheek that he could not restrain a strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted, the birthmark essay.
Forthwith there issued from an inner apartment a man of low stature, but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was grimed with the vapors of the furnace, the birthmark essay. This personage had been Aylmer's underworker during his whole the birthmark essay career, and was admirably fitted for that office by his great mechanical readiness, and the skill with which, while incapable of comprehending a single principle, he executed all the details of his master's experiments.
With his vast strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the indescribable earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent man's physical nature; while Aylmer's slender figure, and pale, intellectual face, were no less apt a type of the spiritual element. The scene around her looked like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, sombre rooms, where he had spent his brightest years in recondite pursuits, into a series of beautiful apartments not unfit to be the secluded abode of a lovely woman.
The walls were hung with gorgeous curtains, which imparted the combination of grandeur and grace that no other species of adornment can achieve; and as they fell from the ceiling to the floor, their rich and ponderous folds, concealing all angles and straight lines, appeared to shut in the scene from infinite space.
For aught Georgiana knew, it might be a pavilion among the clouds. And Aylmer, excluding the sunshine, which would have interfered with his chemical processes, had supplied its place with perfumed lamps, emitting flames of various hue, but all uniting in a soft, impurpled radiance, the birthmark essay.
He now knelt by his wife's side, watching her earnestly, the birthmark essay, but without alarm; for he was confident in his science, and felt that he could draw a magic circle round her within which no evil might intrude. Ah, I remember," said Georgiana, faintly; and she placed the birthmark essay hand over her cheek to hide the terrible mark from her husband's eyes. Believe me, Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single imperfection, since it will be such a rapture to remove it.
I never can forget that convulsive shudder. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of unsubstantial beauty came and danced before her, imprinting their momentary footsteps on beams of light.
Though she had some indistinct idea of the method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion was almost perfect enough to warrant the belief that her husband possessed sway over the spiritual world, the birthmark essay.
Then again, when she felt a wish to look forth from her seclusion, the birthmark essay, immediately, as if her thoughts were answered, the procession of external existence flitted across a screen. The scenery and the figures of actual life were perfectly represented, but with that bewitching, yet indescribable difference which always makes a picture, an image, or a shadow so much more attractive than the original.
When wearied of this, Aylmer bade her cast her eyes upon a vessel containing a quantity of earth. She did so, with little interest at first; but was soon startled to perceive the germ of a plant shooting upward from the soil. Then came the slender stalk; the leaves gradually unfolded themselves; and amid them was a perfect and lovely flower, the birthmark essay. The flower will wither in a few moments and leave nothing save its brown seed vessels; but thence may be perpetuated a race as ephemeral the birthmark essay itself.
To make up for this abortive experiment, he proposed to take her portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was to be effected by rays of light striking upon a polished plate of metal. Georgiana assented; but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to find the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable; while the minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should have been. Aylmer snatched the metallic plate and threw it into a jar of corrosive acid.
Soon, however, he forgot these mortifying failures. In the intervals of study and chemical experiment he came to her flushed and exhausted, but seemed invigorated by her presence, and spoke in glowing language of the resources of his art.
He gave a history of the long dynasty of the alchemists, who spent so many ages in quest of the universal solvent by which the golden principle might be elicited from all things vile and base.
Aylmer appeared to believe that, by the plainest scientific logic, it was altogether within the limits of possibility to discover this long-sought medium; "but," he added, "a philosopher who should go deep enough to acquire the power would attain too lofty a wisdom to stoop to the exercise of it.
He more than intimated that it was at his option to concoct a liquid that should prolong life for years, perhaps interminably; but that it would produce a the birthmark essay in Nature which the birthmark essay the world, and chiefly the quaffer the birthmark essay the immortal nostrum, the birthmark essay, would find cause to curse.
Again Aylmer applied himself to his labors. She could hear his voice in the distant furnace room giving directions to Aminadab, the birthmark essay, whose harsh, uncouth, misshapen tones were audible in response, the birthmark essay, more like the grunt or growl of a brute than human speech. After hours of absence, Aylmer reappeared and proposed that she should now examine his cabinet of chemical products and natural treasures of the earth.
Among the former he showed her a small vial, in which, he remarked, was contained a gentle yet most powerful fragrance, capable of impregnating all the breezes that blow across a kingdom, the birthmark essay. They were of inestimable value, the contents of that little vial; and, as he said so, he threw some of the perfume into the air and the birthmark essay the room with piercing and invigorating delight.
The Birthmark analysis.
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Sep 02, · The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne Aylmer, a brilliant scientist and philosopher who marries Georgiana becomes obsessed with removing a small birthmark on his wife’s cheek as he believes in perfection. Before Georgian’s marriage she barely focused on the birthmark, but was convinced to allow her husband help get rid of the cheek mark Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story The Birthmark is the story of how one man’s obsession killed his wife. Aylmer is a man of science and the husband of Georgiana. Georgiana is absolutely perfect in Aylmer’s eyes, except for the birthmark on her cheek in the shape of a tiny hand. His obsession of her birthmark drives [ ] Ali Qutab Honor American Literature “The Birthmark”: Essay #4 December 30th, The Effect of Nature on the Scientific Ego of Aylmer Throughout, “The Birthmark“, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, symbolism and imagery are used to show that Aylmer 's attempt to perfect something natural is the cause of Georgiana 's death and that when man manipulates something as powerful as Nature, terrible things can occur
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