Erin Kellock Ms. Battle Engl. 112P 28 Aug. 2014 Is Beauty Only Skin Deep? Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Birth-Mark shows man’s struggle of accepting one’s true and natural beauty and sciences’ obsession with perfecting nature. In the tale of a 19th century scientist and his pursuit of removing the birthmark from his otherwise perfect wife, the reader sees how tight of a grip the human mind has over the soul. More striking though is the question brought about by how far one would go to defy nature with science to achieve pure perfection. The resounding theme Hawthorne focuses on is imperfection and mortality. Simply put; no one is perfect, and no one can escape death. It is a part of life. Set during the period of flourishing scientific advancements, the antagonist Aylmer has dedicated his life to scientific methods of experimentation and observation. His …show more content…
Instead of correcting his own failures, he soon forgets them. A parallel is drawn between overlooking his failed experiments and neglecting to see Georgiana’s exceptional beauty. The correlation of quickly dismissing these faults has a biblical equivalent to the “Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew 7. Specifically in verse 3 Jesus says, "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" (818) this simply cannot be ignored, as at the time of the writing, Hawthorne is condemning what was left of the New England Puritan culture. Driving home the point that instead of working on fixing their own failures, they made a living by singling out the mistakes and flaws of others. In Aylmer's rigid pursuit to remove the "flaw”, he is blind from his own