" 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.
29-643: The Old Manse is a historic manse in Concord , Massachusetts , United States, notable for its literary associations. It is open to the public as a nonprofit museum owned and operated by the Trustees of Reservations . The house is located on Monument Street, with the Concord River just behind it. The property neighbors the North Bridge , a part of Minute Man National Historical Park . The Old Manse
58-517: A bas-relief portrait medallion of his brother Charles Emerson, who had died in 1836. She praised the town to Hawthorne, who responded, "Would that we could build our cottage this very now amid the scenes. My heart thirsts and languishes to be there". Prior to their arrival at the Manse, Henry David Thoreau created a vegetable garden for the couple. The garden, intended as a wedding gift, included beans, peas, cabbages, and squash. The Hawthornes lived in
87-460: A minister , usually used in the context of Presbyterian , Methodist , Baptist and other Christian traditions. Ultimately derived from the Latin mansus , "dwelling", from manere , "to remain", by the 16th century the term meant both a dwelling and, in ecclesiastical contexts, the amount of land needed to support a single family. Many notable Scots have been called "sons (or daughters) of
116-439: A few drops. Protesting that she doesn't need proof to trust her husband, Georgiana drinks the concoction and promptly falls asleep. Aylmer watches and rejoices as the birthmark fades little by little. Once it is nearly gone, Georgiana wakes up to see her image in a mirror, the birthmark almost completely faded. She smiles but then informs Aylmer that she is dying. Once the birthmark fades completely, Georgiana dies. "The Birth-Mark"
145-477: A portrait of her, the image is blurred save for her birthmark revealing the disgust he has of it. He experiments some more and describes some of the successes to her but as he questions how she is feeling, Georgiana begins to suspect that Aylmer has been experimenting on her the entire time without her knowledge and consent. One day, she follows him into his laboratory, and on seeing her there, Aylmer accuses her of not trusting him and says that having her birthmark in
174-675: A spectacle of such perfect horror... She was the very image of death-agony." The incident inspired the climactic scene in his novel The Blithedale Romance (1852). The Hawthornes hosted several notable guests while living here. In May 1845, future President of the United States Franklin Pierce visited along with their mutual Bowdoin College friend Horatio Bridge . Peabody recalled the meeting fondly and recorded her first impression of Pierce as "loveliness and truth of character and natural refinement." Another visitor
203-411: Is described as being short and bulky with a shaggy appearance; Aylmer addresses him as "thou human machine" and "thou man of clay." Wright refers to Nancy Bunge's observation that "because Aminadab possesses vast physical strength and 'earthiness' he undertakes to perform unpleasant tasks in order to free Aylmer to 'cultivate delusions of transcendence'". Judith Fetterley suggests that "Aminadab symbolizes
232-428: Is that "The Manse" refers to a working building rather than simply applying as a name. The Birth-Mark 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
261-417: Is that he was a man whose "most splendid successes were almost invariably failures." Rather than obsessing over correcting his failures, he quickly forgets them. Similarly, instead of obsessing over Georgiana's splendid beauty, he quickly forgets it. That a man of so many failures would be trying to perfect someone else is both ironic and allegorical. This type of story has biblical symmetry to Jesus's "Sermon on
290-484: Is — the demonstration of how to murder your wife and get away with it". Hawthorne may have been criticizing the epoch of reform in which he was living, and specifically calling attempts at reform ineffective and the reformers dangerous. The story is often compared to Edgar Allan Poe 's " The Oval Portrait ". Aylmer is a scientist and husband to Georgiana. Robert B. Heilman suggests that Aylmer has taken science as his religion and that Aylmer’s views on "the best that
319-686: The Concord Fight , from his farm fields while his wife and children witnessed the fight from the upstairs windows of their house. Emerson died in October 1776 in West Rutland, Vermont, while returning home from Fort Ticonderoga . His widow, Phebe Emerson, remarried to the Rev. Ezra Ripley , who succeeded Emerson as the minister at First Parish Church in Concord. Their family continued to live in
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#1732780883794348-685: The Earth could offer" is "inadequate". Heilman further says that "the mistake Aylmer makes" is the "critical problem" with the story, in that he has "apotheosized science". Georgiana is married to Aylmer and, as Sarah Bird Wright puts it, the "doomed heroine" of the story. Georgiana agrees to allow Aylmer to experiment on her in an attempt to remove her birthmark—which turns out to be a fatal decision. Wright quotes Millicent Bell's thoughts on Georgiana's final words by saying they are "indicative of Hawthorne’s struggle with romanticism... he yearns to depict life as found". Aminadab, Aylmer's laboratory assistant,
377-580: The Mount." In Matthew 7:3, Christ is quoted as saying, "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" Aylmer's unyielding pursuit to remove the one "flaw" from Georgiana shows his own blindness of conscience. Georgiana's death is foreshadowed in Aylmer's dream of cutting out the mark, in which he discovers the birthmark is connected to her heart. He elects to cut out her heart as well in his attempt to remove
406-672: The Old Manse, on January 24, 1835, Emerson proposed in a letter to Lydia Jackson . After their marriage, they moved elsewhere in Concord, to a home he named "Bush", now known as the Ralph Waldo Emerson House . In 1842, the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne rented the Old Manse for $ 100 a year. He moved in with his wife, transcendentalist Sophia Peabody , on July 9, 1842, as newlyweds. Peabody had previously visited Concord and met Ralph Waldo Emerson while working on
435-515: The Old Manse. Ripley served as Concord's town minister for 63 years. In October 1834, Ralph Waldo Emerson moved to Concord and boarded at the Manse where he lived with his aging step-grandfather Ezra Ripley. He shared the home with his mother Ruth, his brother Charles, and his aunt Mary Moody Emerson . While there, he wrote the first draft of his essay " Nature ", a foundational work of the Transcendentalist movement . Also while living at
464-469: The Trustees of Reservations on November 3, 1939. The house was conveyed complete with all its furnishings, and contains a remarkable collection of furniture, books, kitchen implements, dishware, and other items, as well as original wallpaper, woodwork, windows and architectural features. The Old Manse was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966 and a Massachusetts Archaeological/Historic Landmark
493-442: 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, realizing that the birthmark is deeper, 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
522-536: The birthmark removed from her cheek than to continue to endure Aylmer's horror and distress that comes upon him when he sees her. The following day, Aylmer deliberates and then decides to take Georgiana to the apartments where he keeps a laboratory. He glances at Georgiana with the intent to console her but can't help but shudder violently at seeing her imperfection; Aylmer's reaction causes her to faint. When she awakens, he treats her warmly and comforts her with some of his scientific concoctions but when he attempts to take
551-401: The birthmark. Other critics, like Stephen Youra, suggest that, to Aylmer, the birthmark represents the flaws within the human race—which includes "original sin", which "woman has cast men into"—and because of this, elects it as the symbol of his wife's "liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death". Others suggest viewing the tale "as a story of failure rather than as the success story it really
580-575: The collection Mosses from an Old Manse (1846). In the introduction to that collection, he described the Old Manse: "Between two tall gateposts of roughhewn stone... we behold the gray front of the old parsonage, terminating the vista of an avenue of black ash trees." Apocryphally, the Hawthornes were forced out of the home for not paying their rent. In actuality, the Ripley family wanted to reclaim
609-511: The home for themselves. The Hawthornes moved to Salem in 1845. Returning to Concord seven years later, by then living on the other side of town at The Wayside , Sophia Hawthorne visited the Old Manse on October 1, 1852, and referred to it as "the beloved old house". After the Hawthornes, the home was occupied by Sarah Bradford Ripley for several years. The house remained in use by the Emerson-Ripley family until 1939, and transitioned to
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#1732780883794638-416: The house for three years. In the upstairs room that Hawthorne used as his study, the pair etched affectionate statements into the window panes. The inscription reads: On the first anniversary of his marriage, Hawthorne and his neighbor, poet Ellery Channing , searched the neighboring Concord River for the body of Martha Hunt, a local woman who drowned. Hawthorne wrote of the incident, "I never saw or imagined
667-650: The manse", and the term is a recurring point of reference within Scottish media and culture. For example, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Gordon Brown was described as a "son of the manse" as he is the son of a Presbyterian minister. When selling a former manse, the Church of Scotland always requires that the property should not be called "The Manse" by the new owners, but "The Old Manse" or some other acceptable variation. The intended result
696-420: The marriage, which he suddenly sees as sexual: "now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now stealing forth again, and glimmering to-and-fro with every pulse of emotion". Written shortly after Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody , the story emphasizes the husband's sexual guilt disguised as superficial cosmetology . Aylmer's pursuit of perfection is both tragic and allegorical. The irony of Aylmer's obsession and pursuit
725-411: The room will foil his efforts. She professes complete trust in him but demands that he inform her of his experiments. He agrees and reveals that his current experiment is his last attempt to remove the birthmark, and Georgiana vows to take the potion, regardless of any danger it poses to her. Soon after, Aylmer brings her the potion, which he demonstrates as effective by rejuvenating a diseased plant with
754-502: The same year. The Manse is open seasonally for guided tours given by the Trustees of Reservations. The garden, originally created by Thoreau, has been recreated. The on-site book store in the house specializes in the American Revolution, women's history, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Transcendentalism, and sustainability. Manse A manse ( / ˈ m æ n s / ) is a clergy house inhabited by, or formerly inhabited by,
783-522: Was Margaret Fuller , whose sister Ellen had married another Concord writer named Ellery Channing in 1842. Upon hearing of her engagement, Fuller had written to Sophia Peabody, "If ever I saw a man who combined delicate tenderness to understand the heart of a woman, with quiet depths and manliness enough to satisfy her, it is Mr. Hawthorne." During his time in the Old Manse, Hawthorne published about twenty sketches and tales, including " The Birth-Mark " and " Rappaccini's Daughter ", which would be included in
812-545: Was built in 1770 for the Rev. William Emerson , father of minister William Emerson and grandfather of transcendentalist writer and lecturer Ralph Waldo Emerson . The elder Rev. Emerson was the town minister in Concord, chaplain to the Provincial Congress when it met at Concord in October 1774 and later a chaplain to the Continental Army . Emerson observed the fight at the North Bridge , a part of
841-635: Was first published in the short-lived Boston magazine The Pioneer in its March 1843 issue. That same month, it was also printed in The Pathfinder in New York and, later, collected as part of Mosses from an Old Manse in 1846. Like many of the tales Hawthorne wrote during his time living in The Old Manse , "The Birth-Mark" discusses the psychological impact in sexual relations. The birthmark does not become an issue to Aylmer until after
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