Owning Perfection: The Struggle between Science and Nature in
Nathaniel Hawthornes The Birthmark.
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literature
school essay
date published 11/12/2007
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level : Advanced
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In many love poems written to praise the beauty or virtue of a woman, the woman or the womans love is often seen as a material possession or a thing to be owned. In Nathaniel Hawthornes The Birthmark, the woman is seen as something to be improved upon and perfected. Love is not only something to be possessed; it is something to be invested in, like any other expensive material thing. Hawthornes story is not only about love within a materially driven culture, it is about dominance and dependence. It is also about the struggle between nature and science, the obsessions produced by this struggle, and how the struggle resolves.
