the human race—which includes "original sin", which "woman has cast men into"—and because of this, elects it as the symbol of his wife's "liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death". Others suggest viewing the tale "as a story of failure rather than as the success story it really is — the demonstration of how to murder your wife and get away with it". Hawthorne may have been criticizing the epoch of reform in which he was living, and specifically calling attempts at reform ineffective and the reformers dangerous. The story is often compared to Edgar Allan Poe's "The Oval Portrait". Character analysis Aylmer is a scientist and husband to Georgiana. Robert B. Heilman suggests that Aylmer has taken science as his religion and that Aylmer’s views on "the best that the Earth could offer" is "inadequate". Heilman further says that "the mistake Aylmer makes" is the "critical problem" with the story, in that he has "apotheosized science". Georgiana is the wife of Aylmer and, as Sarah Bird Wright puts it, the "doomed heroine" of the story. Georgiana agrees to allow Aylmer to experiment on her in an attempt to remove her birthmark—which turns out to be a fatal decision. Wright quotes Millicent Bell's thoughts on Georgiana's final words by saying they are "indicative of Hawthorne’s struggle with romanticism... he yearns to depict life as found". Aminadab, Aylmer's laboratory assistant, is described as being short and bulky with a shaggy appearance; Aylmer addresses him as "thou human machine" and "thou man of clay." Wright refers to Nancy Bunge's observation that "because Aminadab possesses vast physical strength and 'earthiness' he undertakes to perform unpleasant tasks in order to free Aylmer to 'cultivate delusions of transcendence'". Judith Fetterley suggests that "Aminadab symbolizes the earthly, physical, erotic self that has been split apart from Aylmer". Critic Evan Lang Pandya contends that Aminadab, whose characterization hearkens after that of the Greek god Hephaestus, represents pagan elements in Puritan New England culture. Adaptation The story was adapted into a one-act opera by Jean Eichelbarger Ivey, written between 1980 and 1982. References Bibliography . . . . . . . . . Rpt. in . External links The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne 1843 short stories Short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne Works originally published in American magazines Uxoricide in fiction Works adapted into operas