Essay on the Angel of a Woman in The Birthmark -- Birthmark Essays

Angel of a Woman in The Birthmark Nathaniel Hawthornes forgetful story, The Birthmark, contains a wonderful example of the perfect wife. This essay will founder that theme. In the opening paragraph of The Birthmark the bank clerk introduces Aylmer as a scientist who had made experience of a smellual affinity more prepossessing than any chemical one. Hawthornes description of the scientists venerate for Georgiana is apt, for love is just that spiritual. And the theme of this tale is a spiritual one. Through the feed of the story Aylmer declines spiritually, while Georgiana advances spiritually. Even after Aylmer has persuaded a beautiful fair sex to become his wife, he is not capable of lovable her properly, unselfishly, because he had given over himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies ever to be weaned from them by any second passion. The narrator seeks to justify this error or pretermit in Aylmer by explaining that it was not unusual for the love of science to equate the love of woman in its depth and absorbing energy. Already at the outset of the tale, the reader perceives that Georgiana is going to be shortchanged in this marriage. She is exposed to the chore initially when her husband asks whether it never occurred to you that the mark upon your cheek might be removed? Aylmer is in quest of physical perfection in his wife unfortunately he discounts her inner, spiritual value so clearly manifested in her comment To tell you the truth it has been so often called a take hold of that I was simple enough to imagine it might be so. In using the word simple she is being honest and not mordacious she is being humble and respectful of others (parents?) evaluation of herself. T... ...dab Laugh, thing of the senses You have gain the right to laugh. But there is no success, for with great tenderness and take for her husbands happiness, Georgiana softly says, I am dying The narrators beautifully poetic way of expressing the demise of the wife is memorable The fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union with a mortal frame. The soul of this angelic, loving woman, lingering a moment near her husband, took its heavenward flight. A sure angel of womankind is ascending to heaven. WORKS CITED Hawthorne, Nathaniel . The Birthmark Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia program library http//etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=HawBirt.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1& naval division=div1