Does Aylmer love his wife though? For a moment, maybe he just loves the image of Georgiana without the birthmark. Aylmer is a scientist and he believes that he can change her face, remove the birthmark. He succeeded in making the birthmark go away but killed his wife in the process. Just like today, people get plastic surgery so much that some get addicted to it.
When he tells his fiancée, Sibyl Vane, that he does not want to see her anymore, she becomes despondent and kills herself. Her suicide gives rise to his guilty and remorseful feelings. He considers her death his fault, and there had to have been something he could’ve done to prevent her death. When Lord Henry hears of Dorian’s culpability, he swiftly saturates Dorian’s head with his philosophies and repudiates anything more of how Sibyl’s death is Gray’s burden to bear and to think of her death as a “perfect artistic representation of undying love” (Wilde 79-89). Although Dorian rapidly surrenders to Lord Henry’s words, the idea that he felt rueful shows that within Gray, there is the capability of
The Puritan Zeal and Spiritualized Maternalism in “The Birthmark” On the surface it seems that Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Birthmark” is only cautionary story about the abuse of science. A story about a mad scientist facing the fatal consequences of his overreaching ambition, and his wife dies after taking part in an experiment where the intention is to remove her birthmark and thus make her perfect. From this point of view the moral of the story seems simple and straightforward. But it is a mistake to read the story as only concerning science and scientists. Hawthorne is actually commenting on the American psyche as a whole, indeed the Western psyche in the larger context.
Aylmer is blinded by ambition and is determined to remove the birthmark from his wife’s cheek. Aylmer submerges himself into science trying to find a way to correct what he says is a visible mark of earthly imperfection. Aylmer’s love for science rivals his love for Georgiana which causes him to be blinded. While talking with Georgiana about the birthmark he says “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 (Hawthorne 314).” By doing so he tries to play the role of god and take into his own hands something he says is imperfect and make it perfect with science these kinds of things shouldn’t be controlled my mere humans. In doing so Aylmer matches his scientific abilities against nature itself and in the end nature won taking away from the earth the closest thing to perfection Georgiana.
She purposely lay the elevated vision of Mother Nature with the frightening phenomenon of an artificial monster and his alarming exploits. The perception of nature supporting rejuvenation and satisfaction is demonstrated when Victor expresses, “These sublime and magnificent scenes afforded me the greatest consolation that I was capable of receiving.” The most obvious use of nature to heal Victor’s sanity is subsequential to death of William, his youngest sibling, and Justine, the household servant. His brothers passing gravely affected Victor and it causes himself to fall into heavy anguish. He cannot heal even when his childhood friend Henry tries to alleviate Victor’s despair. While he travels to his family in Geneva, he finds a source of tranquility in nature to keep him sane.
Alex Boyles Mr. Imms English 102 5 February 2015 The Birthmark and Its Themes Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the short story “The Birthmark” and centered the entire story on symbolism. The story has many different themes and does not hide the fact that it shows symbolism. "The Birthmark" is a short story centering on an eighteenth-century scientist's obsession with removing a birthmark from the cheek of his extraordinarily beautiful wife. The story can almost be categorized as a dark romance. It is a very descriptive story that compares human perfection with obsession.
Reet Goyal Mr. Belellano Honors English 1 November 5, 2013 Be Yourself A prominent theme in the short fiction narrative “The Necklace,” by the French author Guy de Maupassant is that many individuals do not appreciate what is given to them and they always want more in order to meet society’s expectations. Madame Mathilde Loisel’s husband worked extremely hard to get himself and his wife an invitation to an extravagant party that he knew she’d enjoy because she desired glamour. Monsieur Loisel extremely proud of what he had done, but when he brought the envelope home his wife immediately threw it to the side and said, “’I haven’t a thing to wear. How could I go?’” (de Maupassant 334) Madame Loisel should have been over the moon with excitement that she had gotten the opportunity to go to such a fancy ball, but all she cared about was how she was expected to look gorgeous if she were to attend. Her first thought, when she received the invitation, was of appearance instead of gratitude.
Symbolism Symbolism is very effective in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “The Birthmark”. Georgiana is portrayed as a very beautiful woman, but Aylmer, her husband, can only focus on her only flaw. She has a red, hand-shaped mark on her left cheek. This birthmark is the basis of symbolism for the entire story. One, it symbolizes imperfection and morality.
The portrait, however, absorbs all the signs of aging, vices and misdeeds of which stain overnight. The portrait symbolizes immortality, while the beauty of Dorian and his apparent innocence are symbol of bourgeois hypocrisy who tended to hide all the facets of being. At the end of the novel Dorian stabs the portrait with a knife, killing himself, because he couldn't stand more of what had become, and the picture magically returns to its original purity and beauty. Four years later Oscar Wilde would explore the same theme in “The Picture of Dorian Gray”: Like Stevenson, Wilde suffers from his time’s conditions. In his novel, we can find the expression of extreme Decadentism, centred on the theme of the double, typical of the psychological horror stories.
At some point in life humans will realize the reality of death, and they will want to find a way to escape it. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu dies leaving Gilgamesh shaken and scared. Gilgamesh says, "For Enkidu, I loved him dearly, together we endured all kinds of hardship on his account, for the common lot of man has taken him" (p98). He fears that he will have the same fate as Enkidu and die. He decides to embark on a journey to find Utnapishtim, who survived a terrible flood and is the only mortal to gain immortality.