32 pages • 1 hour read
The Birthmark
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Literary Devices
Foreshadowing and Suspense
Foreshadowing is a literary device authors use to hint at what is to come and to set up expectations for the reader which will be fulfilled as the narrative progresses. These hints can range from subtle details that are not necessarily understood as significant by the reader until the story concludes to more obvious clues. Hawthorne employs heavy-handed clues with his use of foreshadowing in “The Birthmark.”
For example, Hawthorne establishes the interconnectedness of the birthmark and Georgiana herself. The mark is described as “deeply interwoven, as it were, with the texture and substance of her face” (Paragraph 7). Aylmer’s dream confirms the connection between Georgiana and the birthmark. He sees in his dream that the hand shape of the birthmark is wrapped around her heart; this image reinforces its connectedness with Georgiana’s life and communicates the extreme potential danger of removing the birthmark. In his dream, Aylmer fully understands the birthmark’s connection to Georgiana’s mortality, but he is horrified to find himself still willing to remove it forcibly. The dream foreshadows the actions he will take which will end Georgiana’s life.
When the characters enter the laboratory, the foreshadowing intensifies as Georgiana faints when she enters the space, echoing her eventual death there. Aylmer’s servant, Aminadab, comments that if Georgiana were his wife, he would leave the birthmark alone; his words serve as a caution to Aylmer, which he ignores. Aylmer attempts to show his control over nature with a plant, which, forebodingly, withers as soon as Georgiana touches it, and Georgiana herself reads Aylmer’s own recordings of his many failed experiments. All of these signposts suggest that Aylmer’s experiment will also fail, and he will harm his wife in his attempt to force nature to bend to his will.
Irony
Irony is identifiable when the reality of a thing is not as it seems. It is the tension between how things appear and how they actually are, a tension which often leads to an unexpected outcome. In “The Birthmark,” Hawthorne employs situational irony to generate suspense for the reader and to develop his characters. Situational irony can be defined as an incongruity between what the audience expects from a situation and what actually occurs. For example, Aylmer reacts to Georgiana’s incredible beauty with criticism and disgust; her beauty almost repulses him because she is mostly perfect and not completely perfect.
Hawthorne also uses irony to cue the reader into experiencing heightened expectations and suspense. Aylmer creates an elixir for Georgiana which he claims cannot fail, and he demonstrates its effectiveness on a diseased plant, which is healed. Problematically, however, Aylmer’s magical flower instantly dies at her touch. Despite this failure, Aylmer fully believes that his elixir will work, which leads the reader to wonder if Aylmer is right—after all, it healed the geranium. In an ironic twist, the elixir fails, leading to a tragic outcome that is much more emotionally taxing than the death of a plant.
The ultimate irony of the story is the fact that Aylmer’s operation is, technically, a “success.” The operation achieves its aim; it removes Georgiana’s birthmark. Ironically, it is also a failure, as it only succeeds in removing the birthmark at the expense of her life.
Narrator Perspective
“The Birthmark” is told in the third-person perspective by a narrator. The voice of the narrator may or may not be Hawthorne himself as this narrator does not appear to have all the details of the situation at hand. Hawthorne uses this distance between the narrator and the situation at hand to heighten suspense and to point the reader towards important themes.
Hawthorne uses the narrator’s perspective to send a moral, or didactic, message to his audience. He sometimes breaks the third-person voice to address the reader directly as if his short story is a kind of parable. At the end of the short story, the narrator’s voice is minimized while Aminadab has his final laugh at Aylmer’s expense, and Hawthorne breaks the perspective in order to address the audience directly. Hawthorne’s narrator—or perhaps Hawthorne himself—sums up the moral of the story for the reader: Aylmer should have contented himself with a natural, mortal life for his wife, rather than aspiring to make her something perfect and inhuman.
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By Nathaniel Hawthorne
