The Birthmark Analysis
Written in 1843, the “The Birth-Mark” is a story of love, infatuation, emotional attachment, desire of perfect-beauty and sacrifice. In other words, “The Birth-Mark” can be called a story authored by Nathaniel Hawthorne about extraordinary love between Aylmer and Georgia. Aylmer was a scientist who, in order to make his wife (Georgia) perfect by her charming glory, attempts to remove her birthmark from her skin. Going through “The Birth-Mark” the reader has got to be forced to reconsider spontaneously human desire for perfection and its appropriateness.The story touches the emotions of readers forcing them to introspect the actual definition of perfect beauty.
Nobody on earth can deny that we, as the humans, want everything around us, perfect by its embodiment and disposition. Be it our physical figure (personality), car, pet, house or the materialistic things, we want them all flawlessly perfect. Same happened with Aylmer too who, cooperated by his wife herself, attempts to eliminate birthmark from his beautiful and beloved wife Georgia and euthanized her involuntarily.“The Birth-Mark” revolves only around Aylmer and Georgia. Aylmer fascinated by Georgia’s angel-like beauty marries her without noticing anything unwanted over her body. Aylmer doesn’t bother to explore any defect in Georgia’s body prior to marriage as what makes him ignore birthmark was the lust and infatuation, common to affect every man in the world. Aylmer’s ignoring Georgia’s birthmark entitles him to be called a salacious one.
Just after getting united by soul and body with Georgia, Aylmer one day realizes a heart-shaped birthmark on Georgia’s face which in the story proves to be a turning point in a relationship between husband and wife. Despite loving Georgia wholeheartedly, Aylmer fails to ignore her birthmark and seems affected psychologically. Aylmer had shared his traumatic feelings with his wife himself which made Georgia cooperate with him during a so called effective treatment of birthmark. Despite being bestowed with angel-like beauty, Georgia was forced to accept her birthmark as divine curse due to unscrupulous behavior noticed on a part of her husband Aylmer. She had enormous love for her husband. She was well aware of Aylmer devotion towards the goal he determined on his and accomplished the task perfectly. Getting well introduced of her birthmark as a challenging target for her beloved husband, Georgia extended her full cooperation staking her own life too.
It was not only an immense love but a obsession too of making Georgia perfectly beautiful which stimulated Aylmer to remove birthmark with some dangerous cure. The writer Nathaniel Hawthorne divulges the love of Aylmer for his wife Georgia as his attempt of removing birthmark through elixir or magical cure. Seemingly effective to obliterate birthmark, the cure was much dangerous and could put Georgia to death, a fact which both Georgia and Aylmer were well introduced with. What is remarkable to notice over here is Georgia’s accepting the dangerous therapeutical substance giving her own consent for the sake of Aylmer’s accomplishing the goal. She remained neutral towards killer elixir without uttering even a single word against the danger of cure, offered by none other except her own beloved husband Aylmer. Georgia loved Aylmer and relied upon him.
A question may haunt you why Georgia didn’t utter even a single word against dangerous therapy, applied on her by Aylmer. It was Georgia’s devotedness towards Aylmer which made her keep mum letting her destiny take its own course without getting biased. She loved her husband a lot and cared his sentiments too.
Observing Georgia’s approbation for elixir you may develop an idea about her birthmark as lessening her charming beauty vigorously. But it was not the fact as Aylmer’s lab assistant, Ameenadab had indirectly regretted Aylmer’s decision of removing Georgia’s ignorable birthmarks or pigments by murmuring, “if Georgia were my wife, I wouldn’t have removed the birthmark”. Ameenadab was shocked of Aylmer’s peculiar move, the moment Aylmer took Georgia to his lab for removing unwanted marks from her skin. Ameenadab’s reservations about Georgia’s reveals how much Georgia had a power of her libidinous charming beauty on men which Aylmer ignored due only to an obsession of his wife’s looking imperfect to him.
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