Notes On "The Birthmark"

The “mad scientist” is the most commonly used trope in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark.” “As established, […] Aylmer [is] guilty of pursuing a Faustian, higher knowledge. Dr Faustus is granted knowledge by the devil, suggesting perhaps that to reach this level of knowledge, one must go beyond an earthly realm to either heaven or hell. In a letter to Sophia Peabody [who is Hawthorne’s wife,] Hawthorne asks: ‘What delusion can be more lamentable […] than to mistake the physical and material for the spiritual?’ The mistake of Hawthorne’s scientists is perhaps not in their actions, but in their motivational ‘delusion’ that dictates that they can ascend to a higher knowledge, and still remain in mortal form. […] Taylor Stoehr argues that Hawthorne’s characters are punished for remaining in their imaginations, and not the real world. Which is why Hawthorne’s scientist in “The Birthmark” is renowned for being mad because he goes beyond the real world to achieve his desires resulting in the death of his wife because of his desirous nature to erase his wife’s birthmark out of unknown methodologies and methods.

“They, [being Hawthorne’s mad scientists] are however, not completely punished for these delusions. Instead, they are punished for not translating these ‘delusions’ in to a more reasonable version in reality. Their imaginations stretch too far, and mistake a ‘physical’ reality as capable of realizing ‘spiritual’ delusions. In attempting to achieve their fantasies, the scientists reach to realms such as heaven and hell that cannot support physical human forms, and their experiments inevitably end in death. Hawthorne’s fiction explores alchemy and physical chemistry. These pursuits’ processes, results, and consequences all reside in the physical. However, the moral choices which his characters encounter are what subsequently affect the physical realm that he focuses on. The use of alchemy may be detrimental, but the root of evil he examines extends ‘monster-like, out of the caverns of [the] heart.”

This whole quote is the whole meaning of the mad scientist. The mad scientist does not love but extends his love to science, meaning that he does not care for beauty or the affections of the beloved but seeks to bring the natural world to its knees by means of alchemy and of science. It is critical of the mad scientist to remake and progress, but by no means have no respect for nature and that mankind’s evil comes from within his heart and by the product of the affliction itself. For instance, “in the seventeenth century, genuine scientific breakthroughs were ideals of the future. The reality was alchemy, an extremely basic science in which procedures were practically guesswork. It is this sense of the unknown that induces both fear and questions of morality in Hawthorne’s science fiction. The short stor[y] ‘The Birthmark’ […] include[s] [an] alchemist[…], bringing a Frankenstein-esque horror as to the possibilities and lengths the scientists will go to in order to achieve progress.”

“The [scientist], Aylmer, [is] bound […] in an almost religious, Promethean quest to reach a higher knowledge, a higher spiritual being than that of mere mortals. Through reaching for this spiritual ideal, concepts of morality are complicated further. It is here necessary to consider whether if one is dedicated to reaching a higher knowledge, he is therefore above mankind and exempt from mortal laws of morality. The practice of alchemy not only had no written definition, but its process and methodology were also unknown. The danger of exploring the unexplored is heightened by the use of people as subjects.”

The mad scientist does not have a curiosity for nature but rather, a sort of narcissistic operation of his methods and, that he knows everything by way of science. That to procure the scientific would be to promote their affirmations of the known on their victims.

Works Cited

Writer, Essay. “Ethicality of Alchemist Knowledge in ‘Rappaccini’s Daughter’ and ‘The Birthmark.’” Literature Essay Samples, 16 July 2021, literatureessaysamples.com/ethicality-of-alchemist-knowledge-in-rappaccinis-daughter-and-the-birthmark.