The broken illusion of science as divine in "The Birthmark"

The main character in “The Birthmark,” Aylmer, is a “man of science.” This “man of science,” however, soon falls into better characterization by Hawthorne as a blasphemer, a sorcerer, and eventually a murderer. Before such conclusions are made, Hawthorne allows for some ambiguity in his portrayal of scientific achievement, such as science's possibility for man to “lay his hand on the secret of creative force, and perhaps make new worlds for himself” (1320). Continued use of divine metaphors and allusions to creation, immortality, and infinite knowledge set up a parallel between modern science and the power of God, though this parallel is decidedly falsified by the end of the story. Hawthorne thus suggests that Aylmer allows his knowledge of science to be seen as divine in order to control those around him, specifically his new wife, Georgiana.

            The illusion of science as divine is the introductory concept for Greenblatt’s “Invisible bullets” article and his eventual theory of the perpetuation and containment of subversion in power structures. Thomas Harriot’s account of the Algonkians’ collapsing belief system in face of European science mirrors Aylmer’s use of science in his attempt to remove his wife’s birthmark. In this comparison, Harriot (as a representative for European colonists) and Aylmer are positioned as the dominant authority, and the Native Indians and Georgiana are the ignorant and manipulated “simple people” (Greenblatt 23). Harriot explains that the Native Indians assumed divine intervention on the part of the Europeans because the Europeans’ scientific inventions “so far exceeded [the Native Indians’] capacities to comprehend the reason and means how [the European inventions] should be made and done” (Greenblatt 22). Clearly, though Harriot does not say as much, little effort was made to explain how the devices worked. As Greenblatt suggests, Harriot and the European colonists as a whole allowed the ignorant to stay ignorant in order to implement the Machiavellian hypothesis of divine authority for the benefit of the colonists.

Similarly, Aylmer hides Georgiana from his true scientific process as he attempts to concoct an “elixir” to remove the birthmark from her face. He furnishes a section of his laboratory as a veritable “enchantment,” a room decorated with beautiful curtains, perfumes, and colored lamps. Aylmer literally “exclud[es] the sunshine,” or the truth, under the pretense that the sun will degrade his chemical processes (1325). Yet the room is beautiful and fanciful, and denotes nothing to Georgiana but the magical possibilities of her husband’s profession. In this way, Greenblatt’s description of the theatricality of Elizabethan power comes into play. The constructed fantasy of scientific power entrances Georgiana in the same way that the visibility of Elizabethan power entranced its subjects (as Greenblatt argues), and for Georgiana erases all doubts of Aylmer’s power as a scientist. Aylmer encourages her complicity also by an “introduction” to his laboratory, in which he shows her only a poison he deems to be the “Elixir of Immortality” and his notes on his experiments to create the “Elixir Vitae;” such substances belong more readily to a god than to a man, as Georgiana is led to believe.

            The truly interesting moment in respect to the relationship between the article and the story takes place when Georgiana “breaks the spell” and invades Aylmer’s true scientific space. The threat of the broken illusion is present in both the cases of the colonists and Native Indians and Aylmer and Georgiana. For the Europeans in the New World, the truth is never revealed and thus the colonists are never in danger of starvation due to an Indian revolt. In the case of “The Birthmark,” Georgiana’s invasion is twofold. First, she reads her husband’s “folio,” or record of all his experiments, and second, she physically enters the laboratory where Aylmer works. Aylmer is enraged when she enters the laboratory, insisting that “there is danger!” (1329). This danger seems less a physical danger to Georgiana and more the danger posed to Aylmer’s authority as a scientist, or to Georgiana, as a divine figure.

Yet unlike what we assume would have happened had the Native Indians discovered that European science was not divine, Georgiana continues to submit to Aylmer’s authority. In fact, she “worship[s] [him] more than ever!” (1328). By reading Aylmer’s folio, Georgiana sees that most of his experiments have failed in their original purpose, but have achieved a small advancement of some kind: “his brightest diamonds were the merest pebbles” (1328). She gains only respect for Aylmer upon learning his true scientific process and leaving the illusion of divinity behind. Hawthorne thus implies that the main “truth” that Aylmer hides and that Georgiana comes to accept is the limitation, but not complete invalidity, of modern science. Georgiana’s eventual understanding of science therefore allies her metaphorically with Harriot in Greenblatt’s article, as a subversive other in face of a dominant authority. Both Harriot and Georgiana act within the confines of and submit to an authority, which for Harriot is a religious society and for Georgiana is Aylmer’s control. At the same time, Georgiana’s subversive truth is less easily defined than Harriot’s (as an atheist); her place is found somewhere between the two sides of the debate between religion and science, an ambiguous position for which she eventually sacrifices herself.