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Comparing Symbols In The Necklace And The Birthmark

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Comparison of Symbols in “The Necklace” and “The Birthmark”
In both Guy de Maupassant's short story “The Necklace” and Nathaniel Hawthorne's “The Birthmark”, the theme of vanity as downfall is very prominent. Maupassant's use of the birthmark and Hawthorne's use of the necklace as symbols offer direct evidence to this theme. My goal in this paper is to compare and contrast the two main symbols of the short stories in question using evidence from the source material.
“The Birthmark” involves Georgiana, the young and beautiful wife of a scientist, who has a birthmark the shape of a tiny, red human hand. Georgiana, who previously thought her birthmark to be charming, senses her husband's disgust in this perceived disfigurement. After a particularly jarring display of her husband’s disgust for her birthmark, she becomes willing to remove it because she wants her husband's love and admiration again. The birthmark actually, …show more content…

Loisel detests her real life, often daydreaming about having a better one. Her husband, a working class man, cues in on this and in a desire to make her happy has hopped through many hoops to get her an invitation to a fancy ball thrown by his boss. She borrows a diamond necklace from her wealthy friend Madame Forestier in order to ‘fit in’ with the upperclass. Over the course of the night, she loses this necklace, and the next ten years are spent by her husband and herself working in “abject poverty” to pay the loans needed in order to replace it. The necklace ends up being a fake, representing the wife’s opportunity to pretend to be the woman she had always dreamt of being, if only for a few hours, and how this vanity ruins what little bit of comfort her life held

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Analyzation of The Birth Mark Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Birth Mark” shows readers the foolishness and selfishness of trying to create a perfect being and defying our creator. Nathaniel shows an example of this act by publishing this story of Aylmer and his non-perfect wife, who has a birth mark in the shape of a hand on her cheek. Aylmer is so disgusted with this mark that he soon begins to use science to take care of the problem. Throughout “The Birth Mark” Hawthorne performs different symbols that indicate Aylmer is just a human being and challenging God to make a perfect human will always lead to death.

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She is very beautiful and as close to perfect as they come, but she cannot seem to look past the birthmark anymore. She wants her husband to see her as beautiful like he did before the marriage. " And she places her hand over her cheek, to hide the terrible mark from her husband's eyes. " Even has she is dying one of the things she does is hide the birthmark. She does not want her husband to look at it and see the thing he despises most on her.

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What Is The Symbolism In The Birthmark

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“The Birthmark by Nathaniel is a short story about a man wanting to perfect his wife. His main purpose in life becomes to find a process that will remove the birthmark from his beautiful wifes Georgina's face. Analyzing the story further, the reader can use symbolism, point of view/tone, and setting to better understand the conflict between nature and science. One can analyze “The Birthmark” by understanding the symbolism found throughout the story. The actual birthmark is a small red hand shaped mark in the middle of Georgiana's left cheek.

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Hawthorne uses imagery sense of smell to get readers to imagine the scene, “When Georgiana recovered consciousness she found herself breathing an atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had recalled her from her deathlike faintness” (Hawthorne). “The Birthmark” also creates irony with “Aminadab, the less inferior man to Aylmer is the one who speaks sensible to Aylmer by disclaiming that if Georgiana was his wife, he would not try to remove the birthmark” (“The Birthmark”). The figurative language helps enhance the story. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s meaning for the story was a man’s strive to perfection only caused the death of his wife. Aylmer was too focused on what perfect could be, and Georgiana blindly agrees with him and decides to remove the birthmark, despite never having a problem with it.

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Georgiana took note of Aylmer’s displeasure of the birthmark from the dream and through his stealthy stare, causing Georgina displeasure (Nathaniel Hawthorne 114). Aylmer’s further loathing of the birthmark, causes Georgiana to give up for the sake of his happiness. She tells, Aylmer after bringing up the conversation of the birthmark, “Either remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life!” (Nathaniel Hawthorne 114). Aylmer could have avoided tragedy, however he failed to listen to his assistant Aminadab, who stated he would “never part with that birthmark” (Nathaniel Hawthorne 114).

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Hawthorne creates similar characters in these two short stories to state that women are pure, flaws are human, and the flaws have motives of their own. A main theme in Hawthorne’s works is women are pure. This is the case for these two short stories as Georgiana and Beatrice both listen intently to their male counterparts and lack the flaws that the men in their stories contain. Georgiana is supportive of her husband’s decision to attempt to rid her of her birthmark and even as she questions it, she ponders the happiness it would bring

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In The Birthmark, Hawthorne depicts the obsession for perfection, the tole it takes on one and the consequences it has. The quest for perfection is unrealistic and unobtainable as we are only mere humans incapable of reconstructing our DNA. In The Birthmark, Hawthorne tells the story of a woman named Georgiana and her scientist husband Aylmer, who are both fixated on a birthmark similar to the look of a tiny human hand. Aylmer is disgusted by Georgiana’s birthmark, wanting to please her husband Georgiana is willing to do anything for him to look at her in a normal manner “Danger is nothing to me;for life which this hateful mark

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