The Conflict in The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Conflict coincides within everyone in our day to day lives in the real world and even in books; when the protagonist and antagonist’s world views do not concur. A protagonist is the main character who advances the plot by striving towards a goal, and the antagonist is the main character who gets in the way of the protagonist reaching their goal. 'Conflict occurs between the protagonist and the antagonist in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Birthmark" because Aylmer's worldview is different than that of Georgiana’s. In this essay, I will demonstrate the conflict between Aylmer and Georgiana by showing how they answer three questions that reveal their worldview: why are we here? what is wrong with us? how do we fix the problem?
According to Aylmer, we are
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Aylmer explains to Georgiana that she “…came so nearly perfect from the hand of nature, that the slightest possible defect … shocks [him]” (220). Aylmer perceives that the world is full of imperfections in nature; including the birthmark on Georgiana’s face. Later on, in the story Aylmer is bothered by the imperfections of his experiments that he presents to Georgiana as well; showing us his desire of perfection. At the same time, however, Georgiana believes that you have to be physically beautiful to be loved. She tells Aylmer, to “either remove [the] dreadful hand, or take [her] wretched life” (223). Georgiana believes that the only way to be loved and accepted is to have outward beauty, and because Aylmer does not find her beautiful with the birthmark, so she asks him to remove it or to kill her. We can see that she is bothered by the thought of not being beautiful in the eyes of her husband because she begins grows impatient waiting for him to remove