to her. Soon after, Aylmer brings her the potion, which he demonstrates as effective by rejuvenating a diseased plant with a few drops. Protesting that she doesn't need proof to trust her husband, Georgiana drinks the concoction and promptly falls asleep. Aylmer watches and rejoices as the birthmark fades little by little. Once it is nearly gone, Georgiana wakes up to see her image in a mirror, the birthmark almost completely faded. She smiles but then informs Aylmer that she is dying. Once the birthmark fades completely, Georgiana dies. Publication history "The Birth-Mark" was first published in the short-lived Boston magazine The Pioneer in its March 1843 issue. That same month, it was also printed in The Pathfinder in New York and, later, collected as part of Mosses from an Old Manse in 1846. Analysis Like many of the tales Hawthorne wrote during his time living in The Old Manse, "The Birth-Mark" discusses the psychological impact in sexual relations. The birthmark does not become an issue to Aylmer until after the marriage, which he suddenly sees as sexual: "now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now stealing forth again, and glimmering to-and-fro with every pulse of emotion". Written shortly after Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody, the story emphasizes the husband's sexual guilt disguised as superficial cosmetology. Aylmer's pursuit of perfection is both tragic and allegorical. The irony of Aylmer's obsession and pursuit is that he was a man whose "most splendid successes were almost invariably failures." Rather than obsessing over correcting his failures, he quickly forgets them. Similarly, instead of obsessing over Georgiana's splendid beauty, he quickly forgets it. That a man of so many failures would be trying to perfect someone else is both ironic and allegorical. This type of story has biblical symmetry to Jesus's "Sermon on the Mount." In Matthew 7:3, Christ is quoted as saying, "Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" Aylmer's unyielding pursuit to remove the one "flaw" from Georgiana shows his own blindness of conscience. Georgiana's death is foreshadowed in Aylmer's dream of cutting out the mark, in which he discovers the birthmark is connected to her heart. He elects to cut out her heart as well in his attempt to remove the birthmark. Other critics, like Stephen Youra, suggest that, to Aylmer, the birthmark represents the flaws within