The Birthmark

The Birthmark

We as humans have always strived for perfection in all facets of our life, but sometimes our own idyllic perception of it overshadows the risks that some people will take to attain those aspects of perfection. Whether it is drug usage in sport, for an athlete to be able to run faster or to hit harder, for him/her to be able to reach a higher level than anyone else to that unattainable goal of perfection. Or even doctors who try and play god and performing plastic surgery on patients to make the patient believe that they have the perfect look and smile or features. The Birthmark is a very interesting book by Nathaniel Hawthorne, in that he explores one's sense of perfection and how far a couple will go to reach it.

The story is based in the in the latter part of the last century. In which the reader is introduced to Aylmer, a scientist, and whose love of science was only rivaled by the love of his beautiful wife Georgiana. Georgiana was a very beautiful woman, whose only flaw was a birth defect on her left cheek the size of two small fingers, which is referred to as the "Crimson Hand" due to the color and shape of the birthmark. Aylmer's striving passion for perfection has forced him to look upon the "hand" as a flaw in Georgiana's otherwise perfect persona. The birthmark eats away at Aylmer's conscious until one day he reveals his disgust in the "crimson hand" and asks his wife whether she has even thought about removing it from her cheek. By doing so Aylmer planted the notion in Georgiana's mind that it was unpleasant to the eye for the first time in her life. This notion eats away at Georgiana as it had with Aylmer until she agrees for her husband to remove the birthmark. But in his efforts to remove the birthmark Georgiana health fades and she dies just as the birthmark seems invisible to the eye.

The reader is