How Does Nathaniel Hawthorne Use Imagery In The Birthmark

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Analysis of “The Birthmark”
In “The Birthmark”, Hawthorne writes:
If there be the remotest possibility of it, let the attempt be made at whatever risk. 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! –Georgiana (421)
Aylmer is a scientist in a time when electricity was only recently discovered (418). He takes time away from his first love, science, to court and wed the beautiful Georgiana. Soon Aylmer is so repulsed and obsessed with Georgiana’s one mar against her perfect beauty, a tiny hand-shaped birthmark upon her cheek, that they both agree upon an attempt to remove the birthmark (419). Aylmer creates a concoction for her to drink in order to remove the tiny mark. This failed experiment costs Georgiana her life and Aylmer’s love and obsession. Hawthorne in “The Birthmark” argues through characters, setting, and imagery that …show more content…

In the grand scheme of things this mark is so insignificant that it even disappears when her complexion becomes flushed. Aylmer is so obsessed with perfection in Georgiana that he almost views this meniscal mark as a personal blemish on his own record as a scientist. The mark is a constant reminder of Georgiana’s mortality which indeed would mean that she is not without flaws. She is imperfect. There is also the dream, or nightmare rather, that Aylmer has. It almost serves as a premonition of what’s to come, how “deeply rooted” the birthmark is. [b]ut the deeper went the knife, the deeper sank the hand, 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 (420). The flower in the lab that when plucked, it turned black and died tells us that Aylmer’s experiments are not

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