The Birthmark Analysis

Nature is the purest form of perfection. The golden sun shining on clear blue waters. Bright flowers blooming in the spring, adding color to an otherwise bleak world. Its beauty is captivating, breathtaking, and inevitably everything. However in some cases pure perfection is not good enough. To some perfection must be made, bypassing the laws of nature, and to those beauty is ultimately lost. Beauty is a fluid idea, it is easily manipulated and easily agreed on by the masses. Through these two works the fluidity of beauty is further explored by how the protagonists attempt to redefine it. In “The Artist of the Beautiful” and “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the characters Owen and Aylmer are similar in their pursuit of producing perfection

In “The Birthmark”, Aylmer works to produce a cure for the handprint on his wife’s cheek. He often states that she is the most beautiful force of nature aside from for her defect. Aylmer spends months in his laboratory concocting a potion that will rid his wife of her ailment. The concoction went against all forms of nature. It defied the laws in which it was created as no man should hold such a powerful concoction in his hands. Aylmer sacrificed nature in order to create a more spectacular sense of perfect than perfection itself. In “The Artist of the Beautiful” Owen attempts to create something that is beyond the bounds of nature, and spends years perfecting his creation. Over the years, he is extremely threatened by his endeavours both mentally and physically, he becomes severely ill because of the mechanism. "Being once carried to see a steam-engine...he turned pale and grew sick, as if something monstrous and unnatural had been presented to him"(Page number?). He is as delicate of a force as the butterfly he creates. "For Heaven 's sake...as you would not drive me mad, do not touch it! The slightest pressure of your finger would ruin me forever"(page). In his obsessive pursuit of perfection, he cuts himself off from the human experience. He builds what he believes he was "created for" without a thought to what he is sacrificing to achieve his goal. The

While “The Artist of the Beautiful” focuses on creating beauty with the influence of themselves. Through these ideas, it can be argued that beauty is personal. Both characters attempted to change the idea of beauty based off of their personal lives. The birthmark was a part of his wife. It is a unique characteristic that allows her to stand apart from the crowd, yet he tries to take it away from her because his idea of beauty is being flawless. The creation of the butterfly was influenced by the idea of Owen turning regular aspects of himself into something more beautiful than anything seen before. Without the personal aspect of the butterfly, it would not stand out to Owen because there are no relatable qualities. His personal influence on the world adds a whole new level of beauty in Owen’s