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The Birthmark

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[H]e was confident in his science, and felt that he could draw a magic circle round her within which no evil might intrude.
-The Birthmark

Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoting the Bhagavad-Gita, July 16, 1945, Alamogordo, New Mexico

Eyebrows were raised and feathers ruffled this week, when Leon R. Kass, appointed by George W. Bush to head the President's Council on Bioethics, asked the newly chosen members of the Council to read Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, The Birthmark, prior to their first meeting. Even the English majors among us were sent scurrying to find this less well known work, which thankfully is available on-line. And what do you find when you track it down? Well, it turns out to be a well turned American Frankenstein tale that obviously appeals to Mr. Kass for its portrayal of a "man of science" with more than his share of hubris. Condescending sniping from libertarians and the Left has already begun.

The scientist, named Aylmer, is married to an almost perfectly beautiful woman, whose one slight imperfection is a birthmark on her cheek. Despite her near flawlessness :

[H]e found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw
of humanity which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they
are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson hand expressed the ineludible
gripe in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest,
and even with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to dust. In this manner, selecting it as the symbol
of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer's sombre imagination was not long in rendering the birthmark
a frightful object...

Convinced that his mastery of science will surely allow him to remove this blemish and bring her to perfection, Aylmer convinces his wife to allow him to experiment on her, to improve upon nature :

'Aylmer,' resumed Georgiana, solemnly, 'I know not what may be the cost to both of us to rid me of this fatal birthmark.
Perhaps its removal may cause cureless deformity; or it may be the stain goes as deep as life itself. Again: do we know
that there is a possibility, on any terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this little hand which was laid upon me before
I came into the world?'

'Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject,' hastily interrupted Aylmer. "I am convinced of the perfect
practicability of its removal.'

'If there be the remotest possibility of it,' continued Georgiana, 'let the attempt be made at whatever risk. Danger is nothing
to me; for life, while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror and disgust,--life is a burden which I would fling
down with joy. Either remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life! You have deep science. All the world bears witness
of it. You have achieved great wonders. Cannot you remove this little, little mark, which I cover with the tips of two small fingers?
Is this beyond your power, for the sake of your own peace, and to save your poor wife from madness?"

'Noblest, dearest, tenderest wife,' cried Aylmer, rapturously, 'doubt not my power. I have already given this matter the
deepest thought--thought which might almost have enlightened me to create a being less perfect than yourself. Georgiana,
you have led me deeper than ever into the heart of science. I feel myself fully competent to render this dear cheek as faultless
as its fellow; and then, most beloved, what will be my triumph when I shall have corrected what Nature left imperfect
in her fairest work! Even Pygmalion, when his sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will be.'

'It is resolved, then,' said Georgiana, faintly smiling. 'And, Aylmer, spare me not, though you should find the birthmark
take refuge in my heart at last.'

How perfectly Hawthorne, even 150 years ago, captures the deluded pride of the man of science, certain that this figurative mark of Cain (it is even shaped like a hand) will yield to the ministrations of reason and science and that he will be able to improve on God's work, will be able to make a perfect human. That peremptory "doubt not my power" is particularly devastating.

As Aylmer whips up concoctions that even he doubts the ultimate wisdom of using, Georgiana can't help but be alarmed :

He more than intimated that it was at his option to concoct a liquid that should prolong life for years, perhaps interminably;
but that it would produce a discord in Nature which all the world, and chiefly the quaffer of the immortal nostrum, would
find cause to curse.

'Aylmer, are you in earnest?' asked Georgiana, looking at him with amazement and fear. 'It is terrible to possess such power,
or even to dream of possessing it.'

Note that her warning is not simply about the power of such an elixir, but that the very ambition to possess it is "terrible."

But, of course, having opened Pandora's Box, Aylmer will not be deterred from his course of action, so he foists a goblet of some foul liquid upon her and, sure enough :

The crimson hand, which at first had been strongly visible upon the marble paleness of Georgiana's cheek, now grew more
faintly outlined. She remained not less pale than ever; but the birthmark with every breath that came and went, lost somewhat
of its former distinctness. Its presence had been awful; its departure was more awful still. Watch the stain of the rainbow
fading out the sky, and you will know how that mysterious symbol passed away.

'By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!' said Aylmer to himself, in almost irrepressible ecstasy. 'I can scarcely trace it now. Success!
success! And now it is like the faintest rose color. The lightest flush of blood across her cheek would overcome it. But she is so pale!'

Ah yes, except for that 'pale' part, well might he be ecstatic. But as the reader will have guessed by now, all is not well :

'My poor Aylmer,' she repeated, with a more than human tenderness, 'you have aimed loftily; you have done nobly. Do not repent
that with so high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best the earth could offer. Aylmer, dearest Aylmer, I am dying!'

The key here is the "more than human" and its suggestion that such perfection is not compatible with humanity. So did one of the great American authors warn us, at the dawn of the industrial age, of the dangerous allure of science and, more specifically, of the belief that mankind is perfectible by Man's own hand and mind.

The Birthmark written by Nathaniel Hawthorne examines the need for the main character to always be perfect. He tries to make up for his less then perfect self by changing the one quality that is not perfect about his wife. This has a very sad ending. His obsession for being perfect is what was his doom in the end. It was a good book to read and I recommend it. It has a conflict between nature vs. science.