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Eve's Daughter, Mary's Child: Women's Representation in Hawthorne's "The Birthmark" - Skredsvig

• This analysis examines the intimate, intricate relationships among human subjectivity, knowledge, and representation in terms of gendered identities. In Hawthorne's "The Birthmark," Georgiana not only embodies but internalizes traditional patriarchal representations of women, thus negating selfhood.

The Return of the Repressed: Illiteracy and the death of the narrative in Hawthorne's "The Birthmark" - Shakinovsky

•  Studies the ways of reading the mark on Georgiana's body in the short story "The Birthmark," by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Discussion of the literary notion of the token in the book "Bodywork" by Peter Brooks; Account of social and cultural responses to the mark; Ambiguities surrounding the mark's capacity for figuration. Brooks focuses strongly on the narrative attempt to inscribe the body -- to create, identify, or discover its particular mark or token as an aspect of a larger epistmophilic urge. In "The Birthmark" the notion of the marked body works precisely the opposite way.
• This article focuses on the symbol of the birthmark and the sexuality and textuality of the mark:
• how the removal of the mark opposes its significance
• social and cultural responses to the mark
• narrator reveals his own attitude about the mark
• Alymer "misread" the mark
• "femaleness" of the mark
• shape of the mark - significance of the hand
• feminist view
• transition of Georgiana from being defensive about her mark to agreeing with Aylmer
• how Alymer stares at the mark - shows his thoughts of inferiority toward women

Speaking of the Unspeakable: Hawthorne's "The Birthmark" - Zanger

• Theme - the ruthless course of the nineteenth century; relationship between maturity and immaturity; relationship between Platonism and Christian authoritarianism; striving for perfection beyond the human and the recognition that such striving can be fatal; metaphoric arena selected to dramatize such striving was the marriage union; the marriage exists in complete isolation from society, totally fill the screen; Alymer's dominance over Georgiana is dramatically particularized in the major settings of the story.

 Hawthorne's "The Birthmark": Science and Romance as Belief - Eckstein

• excess of science and romance
• kind of sexist
• Aylmer only wanted Georgianna as his wife so he could prove to "fix" her and be a great scientist
• mind is man, nature is woman; science brings them together as Mind and Nature

Women Beware Science: "The Birthmark" - Fetterley

• This article focuses on the feminist perspective in "The Birthmark," but also focuses on idealism in the story such as how one might think the story is about "a man's desire to perfect his wife," but the consequence of this is her death. Some other points highlighted in this article are:
• it is her "physical system" that is the reason for Aylmer's obsession to remove the birthmark
• it accentuates the fact that she (Georgiana) is imperfect all because of this one flaw
• it shows how the story portrays women as powerless
• it also shows how men gain power over women

The Invisible Hand Made Visible: "The Birth-Mark" - Weinstein

• Contemporary readers agree that Hawthorne was experimenting with traditional allegory in order to create a new allegory, but that's all they can agree about. There are multiple mixtures of theories that can be applied to Hawthorne's writing.
• Hawthorne quotes "I am not quite sure that I entirely comprehend my own meaning in some of these blasted allegories"
• How he couldn't present himself as a clean slate ecause everything would come second to science
• His failures in the lab make Georgiana the perfect experiment for science and love
• The birthmark was holding her back and separating them from loving each other

A Psychological Reading of "The Birthmark" - Quinn and Baldessarini

• Aylmer, a scientist whose ambition may be to control nature, provides an exceptionally good example of an obsessive character. He is obsessed with imperfection in human nature and is unable to achieve a mature human relationship. 

Aylmer as "Scheidekunstler": The Pattern of Union and Separation in Hawthorne's "The Birthmark" - Napier

• This is a psychological complexity analysis. Symbols discussed:
• Scheidekunstler
• Georgiana (herself)
• The name Georgiana
• unity and disjointment
• Aminadab (as Alymer's dopplerganger)