Birthmark

After reading The Birthmark by Nathaniel Hawthorne, I can easily see where Nina Baym is coming from. He doesn’t see the woman in the story with hatred, instead with love, beauty, and infatuation. It is very easy to tell that the woman in the story is hurt by the person she loves. If I had a husband who was disgusted by something that I couldn’t change, I know I would be deeply hurt. He is showing how men hurt women by wishing all of us to be perfect in every way. It starts as a subtle mention of the mark on her face and if she wanted to remove it, then it became such a big deal that he became more and more repulsive to her husband. He was so focused on removing it to make his wife perfect that he did not even care about her feelings and how bad he was hurting her. Women go through this everyday. They are put down for gaining weight, ect. by their significant others. They are really hurt by the words coming from someone they care for. So, they change. They work hard to lose the weight that their boyfriend/husband did not approve of. But in my opinion, if someone can say something awful to you like that and not care, they will find something else to complain about. If someone is making you feel that way, depressed or disappointed with your body, you can find someone else who can love all of you. In the end Aylmer kills his wife while trying to make her perfect. I think what Hawthorne is trying to say is nobody is perfect and nobody can fix someone else’s imperfections. However, I do not think he was a feminist. He may have respect for women, their feelings, and their desires to be loved for who they are. But, that does not make him a feminist.