Although the theme of The Birthmark, has been interpreted in different ways, I believe the theme of the story is human imperfection and the strive for perfection, which is demonstrated by the birthmark on Georgiana’s face, her husband Aylmer, and their marriage.
The birthmark on Georgiana’s face symbolizes human mortality and imperfection as believed among many critics.
Most criticism has accepted the rather forthright and explicit allegorical interpretation of Hawthorne's "The Birthmark" that regards the mark on Georgiana Aylmer's cheek as the external sign of her human, imperfect condition and understands Aylmer's attempt to remove it as the expression of either scientific, rational, reformist presumption, or of too aspiring an idealism.
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He wants her to be perfect, but he soon finds out that being perfect is also not being human, which is what happens to Georgiana at the end.
Aylmer, Georgiana’s husband, was a man of science. In the beginning of The Birthmark, the narrator tells us:
He had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies ever to be weaned from them by any second passion. His love for his young wife might prove the stronger of the two; but it could only be by intertwining itself with his love of science, and uniting the strength of the latter to his own.
Shortly after his and Georgianna’s wedding, he had a conversation with Georgianna about the removal of her birthmark. Aylmer, being a married man of science, saw the birthmark as a chance to unite both
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The result is, if not marital happiness, at least a feverish compatibility, a temporary symbiosis that finally degenerates into vampirism. It is important to recognize, in this regard, that the purity of Aylmer's quest for perfection is seriously com- promised by his desperate need for a sustaining success. His experiment with Georgiana is only the climax of a lengthy procession of failures, "as melancholy a record as any mortal hand had ever penned," as Georgiana well knows. His attempt to remove her birthmark is no disinterested esthetic quest; it has much of the desperation of a gambler's last cast. (Zanger 366)
According to Weinstein, “The birthmark presents Aylmer with a chance both to right these professional wrongs and, in doing so, to establish Georgiana as the ''perfection" of hearth and home "where he would fain have worshipped" (p. 39).” (Weinstein 48)
From both Zanger and Weinstein, we can gather that with successful removal of the birthmark, not only will Georgianna attain perfection but her husband Aylmer as