The Birth-Mark Illustrated
- ISBN-10
- ISBN-13
- 9798618346948
- Pages
- 25
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2020-02-26
- Author
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
Description
"The Birth-Mark" is a short story by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. The tale examines obsession with human perfection. It was first published in the March 1843 edition of The Pioneer and later appeared in Mosses from an Old Manse, a collection of Hawthorne's short stories published in 1846.Aylmer is a brilliant and recognized scientist and philosopher who drops his focus from his career and experiments to marry the beautiful Georgiana (who is physically perfect except for a small red birthmark in the shape of a hand on her cheek).As the story progresses, Aylmer becomes unnaturally obsessed with the birthmark on Georgiana's cheek. One night, he dreams of cutting the birthmark out of his wife's cheek (removing it like scraping the skin from an apple) and then continuing all the way to her heart. He does not remember this dream until Georgiana asks about what his sleep-talking meant. When Aylmer remembers the details of his dream, Georgiana declares that she would rather risk her life having the birthmark removed from her cheek than to continue to endure Aylmer's horror and distress that comes upon him when he sees her.
