Critical readings of Hawthorne's "The Birthmark" tend to focus primarily on Aylmer's attempt to override the hand of God and the boundaries between science and nature. In the wide range of studies on history, however, little has been said about its racial undertones. Written during a period in American history when racial biology and eugenics dominated scientific studies, Hawthorne's story is haunted by notions of whiteness, purity, and physical appearance. In this article I aim to demonstrate that Aylmer's desire to remove Georgiana's birthmark represents nineteenth-century white anxiety about miscegenation and the desire to promote a superior white race. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay It will serve my purpose better to first review some of the theories of racial biology that were popular at the time the story was published. Two works will be particularly helpful: Samuel Otter's Melville's Anatomies and Shawn Michelle Smith's American Archives. Otter identifies many of the studies on racial differences, while Smith links these studies to the preservation of the white middle class and the role of visual culture in nineteenth-century America. According to Otter, Dutch anatomist Petrus Camper arranged the skulls in ascending order, based on cranial measurements. His study, From the Monkey to the Apollo Belvedere, concluded that the “geometric equations by which the angle of the face increased” were directly proportional to the “civilized characteristics of the wearer” (Otter 34). After evaluating the shapes of several human heads, the German physiologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach concluded that "the Caucasian skull was aesthetically superior" and therefore "must be the original type of head created by God" (24). Studies of phrenology, craniology, physiognomy, and other branches of science universally concluded that the Caucasian, in body and mind, was superior to all other races. Smith traces the ways in which the white middle class used racial biology and eugenics to assert their position. in society and prevent other races from gaining social mobility. Not only the body, but also the blood of whites was considered superior, and miscegenation posed a serious threat to this superiority. Whites were strictly discouraged from interbreeding, as the blood of another race would taint and weaken "pure" Caucasian blood. Demonstrating the widespread fear of miscegenation, a mid-19th century law ordered the sterilization of prisoners and the mentally ill. Smith also notes that the superiority of Caucasian blood was an important factor in the psychology of lynching. “The rape cry of the white lynch mob,” she states, “functioned to incite outrage not only at the violation of 'innocent' white femininity but also at the 'contamination' of the white bloodline” (147). Whites often castrated black males before lynching; the idea was to literally remove the "threat" of interracial mixing and feminize the black male body to reclaim white male superiority. Both Smith and Otter agree that by 1850 the scientific justification of racial inequality was accepted as fact. At the beginning of "The Birth-Mark", Aylmer tells Georgiana that her birthmark is a "flaw" and the "visible sign of earthly inheritance". imperfection" (qtd. in Lauter, 2225). Implicit in his observation is that Georgiana's birthmark compromises her beauty because it compromises her whiteness. The narrator's description of the birthmark as "a crimson stain on the snow"(2226) is particularly significant. The word “stain” is highly indicative of white racism, as is the association of an unblemished face with snow or whiteness. The birthmark's threat to Georgiana's whiteness is also a threat to the whiteness of her future offspring. According to Smith, in the nineteenth century, the middle-class white woman was the "site of biological inheritance" (124), or vehicle through which the advancement of a superior white generation could be achieved. Therefore, Georgiana's birthmark represents an obstacle to reproducing a white child in Aylmer's image. Again, it will be helpful to turn to Smith's historical account, particularly his treatment of the family photo album as a social document and vehicle for preserving the white middle class. In the chapter titled “The Image of the Child is Always Precious: Eugenics and the Reproduction of Whiteness in the Family Photo Album,” she argues that members of the white middle class documented their existence in family albums as a way to preserve their place in society. In his studies of eugenics, Francis Galton brought elements of science into the family album. With a desire to develop scientific evidence of white superiority, he encouraged middle-class white families to document the details of their children's physical growth. By tracking their children's growth and fitting it into predetermined standards, middle-class white families could affirm scientists' claims of superiority and ensure that their children continue their legacy. Smith argues: "We can begin to read the growing interest in 'baby photos' not just as a commercial fad or sentimental ritual, but also as a desire to chart the future of racial bloodlines through photographic artefacts. In this context culturally expanded, ""the photo of the child" signifies not only a sentimental memory but also a scientific "proof" of the racial reproduction of the family" (132). camera. She writes, "The role of the middle-class white woman as both the mechanical reproducer of the 'image of the child' and the biological reproducer of whiteness (in the child's body) flowed into the nineteenth-century science of eugenics" (124). ) The image of a white child became an emblem of racial reproduction, while the white mother, through photographic and physical reproduction, preserved and propagated the biological superiority of the white middle class. Smith's reading of children's portraits and family photo albums sheds new light on the scene in Hawthorne's history involving photography. The moment in which Aylmer creates a daguerreotype of Georgiana is in fact a crucial point in the story, often overlooked by critics. The daguerreotype of Georgiana is important on the one hand because it identifies Aylmer and Georgiana as members of the middle class. As Smith writes, "the daguerreotype opened the elite domain of portraiture to members of the emerging middle classes... In one sense... the daguerreotype portrait functioned as a middle-class appropriation of aristocratic self-representation, as a sign of middle-class cultural power" (13). The narrator's description of Georgiana's boudoir provides further evidence of Aylmer's bourgeois status: "The walls were hung with splendid curtains, imparting the combination of grandeur and grace, which no other kind of ornament can attain..." ( 2229). The placement of the daguerreotype in the story, along with the narrator's description of the boudoir, places Aylmer in the middle class, making him arepresentative of nineteenth-century white males who wished to preserve their heritage. More importantly, Georgiana's daguerreotype is a way for Aylmer to "test" Georgiana's reproductive abilities. Just as nineteenth-century photographs of children served as evidence of the propagation of a white middle class, Georgiana's daguerreotype serves as evidence of her potential to produce offspring; the image reproduced in the metal plaque is symbolic of his future progeny. After Aylmer produces the daguerreotype, the narrator tells us that Georgiana finds "the features of the portrait blurred and indefinable" and that the figure of a hand appears "where the cheek should have been" (2230). The appearance of the birthmark in Georgiana's portrait suggests that her offspring will be "tainted" by the same "stain" or mark of racial identity. Thus, when Aylmer grabs the metal plate and throws it into a jar of corrosive acid, he responds to the visual threat that his offspring will not be purely white. I must pause briefly to address a possible criticism of my reading so far. The family album evidence I have drawn on to make my claims is anachronistic in reading “The Birth-Mark.” Family albums became widespread only after Kodak introduced flexible film and the rise of mechanized printing plants in 1888 (Hales 260-261). However, I believe that the consideration of photography as a means of preserving the white middle class is still very relevant to the interpretation of history. Smith notes, “From the time of its 1839 introduction to the daguerreotype, the first photographic process, the photographic image has been conceptualized as a means of preserving family history and documenting family genealogy” (116). Furthermore, the relationship between visual culture and the preservation of the white middle class is one of several themes in Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables, published only eight years after "The Birth-Mark." Smith writes, “The correspondence between Holgrave's physical qualities and his personal character resonates powerfully with the racialized connection linking body to mind that Francis Galton would proclaimed and that Josiah Nott had imagined decades earlier” (43). Therefore, it is not inappropriate to use Smith's interpretation of the family documents as a tool for reading Hawthorne's story. Nor is it unfair to assume that, when writing “The Birth-Mark,” Hawthorne often thought about the significance of the daguerreotype with respect to race and racial biology. Indeed, the narrator provides several clues to Hawthorne's concern with race and racial biology. . When Aylmer exclaims, “Georgiana, you have led me deeper than ever into the heart of science” (2228), it is most likely a reference to the racial sciences of Hawthorne's day. In the context of the quote, Aylmer claims that his attempts to remove her birthmark led him "deeper than ever" into science. Likewise, scientists of Hawthorne's day were led "into the heart of science" in their attempts to justify white superiority in phrenology, physiognomy, and other sciences. Shortly thereafter, the narrator observes that Aylmer, in his youth, had "made discoveries... which had excited the admiration of all the cultured societies of Europe" (2228), identifying Aylmer with the white, Anglo-Saxon European, considered the noblest and fittest of all human specimens. And in the next sentence, the narrator calls him the “pale philosopher,” drawing even more attention to his whiteness and his roots in the white male Western tradition. The narrator also tells us that, among other scientific pursuits, Aylmer "had explained the mystery of fountains, and how they flow,some so bright and pure... from the dark bosom of the earth" (2228). The choice to define the water as "bright and pure" that flows from the "dark bosom" of the earth is highly indicative of reproduction. Furthermore, the image of a white substance born from a dark body is indicative of Aylmer's concern with Georgiana (who is marked by a racial "stain") producing a white child, the narrator tells us that in addition to the previously mentioned scientific activities, Aylmer "had studied the wonders of the human structure" (2228). Aylmer's interest in human structure is undoubtedly a reference to nineteenth-century studies of the human body such as Camper's From Ape to Apollo Belvedere the Elixir Vitae and his desire to prolong life also suggest his desire to preserve and proliferate a white race. However, his reliance on science to prolong life proves problematic. As the narrator tells us, "[Aylmer] more than implied that it would be his choice to invent a liquid that would prolong life for years - perhaps interminably - but which would produce a discord in nature, which all the world , and above all the drinker of the nostrum immortale, would find reason to curse" (2230). When Aylmer discovers the limits of achieving eternal life through science, he turns to the next best thing: a white woman who can reproduce his image. Early in the story, we are told that Aylmer "left his laboratory in the care of an assistant, cleaned his beautiful face of furnace smoke, washed the acid stains from his fingers, and persuaded a beautiful woman to become his wife " (2225). We don't know, initially, what inspired this abandonment of science in exchange for marriage to a beautiful woman. It is only when we learn that his studies in alchemy, in particular his interest in the Elixir Vitae, "would have produced a discordance in nature", thus foiling his plan to prolong his white, bourgeois life, that we understand his true reason. for leaving science. When the speaker of Sonnet no. 1 of Shakespeare says: "From the fairest creatures we wish to grow / That thus the rose of beauty never dies", postulates procreation as an alternative way to defy Time. Likewise, when science fails him, Aylmer looks to Georgiana to preserve his own and, above all, white image. This statement is further supported by what the narrator tells us about Aylmer's scientific journals. She says: But, for Georgiana, the most compelling volume was a large sheet of paper in her husband's hand, in which he had recorded every experiment of his scientific career... The book, in truth, was both the story and the emblem of his ardent, ambitious, imaginative, but at the same time practical and industrious life... However much he had achieved, he could not help observing that his most splendid successes were almost invariably failures, when compared with the ideal at which he aimed. (2232)Georgiana's observation that her successes were "almost invariably failures" compared to her ideals points once again to the limits of science on her project. The "ideal he aimed at" is undoubtedly the prolongation of life. Despite the narrator's observation that the book was "the story and emblem of his... life," a book's pages will invariably fade, just as his scientific attempts to prolong life indefinitely will invariably fail. Thus, Aylmer turns to the beautiful Georgiana, who can reproduce his image through her offspring. It is only one day, "very soon after their wedding" that Aylmer looks at Georgiana's birthmark, recognizing it as an obstacle to his project andproducing a "trouble in his face" (2225). Calling it a "flaw" and a "visible sign of earthly imperfection," he realizes that the birthmark compromises Georgiana's whiteness and, consequently, the whiteness of her future offspring. He has no choice but to return to science in an attempt to free his wife from the stigma that prevents her from being the perfect white woman. If Aylmer represents whiteness and scientists of racial biology, his racial counterpart in the story is his humble servant, Aminadab. The first information given about him is that he is "a man of short stature, but of massive build, with shaggy hair... which was greased by the fumes of the furnace" (2228). A little later, the narrator comments: "With his immense strength, his disheveled hair, his smoky appearance, and the indescribable earthiness that encrusted him, he seemed to represent the physical nature of man, while Aylmer's slender figure and the pale and intellectual face were not a less suitable type of the spiritual element” (2229). Many things are noteworthy in the language of Aminadab's description. First, his "short stature" places him in direct contrast with the white male standard of civilization, or with the Apollo Belvedere figure. Secondly, his "smoky appearance" suggests that his skin is dark in color (particularly when compared to Aylmer's pale complexion) and places him as a racialized figure in the story, Aminadab's physical characteristics are placed in direct contrast (and in an inferior position) to Aylmer's "pale and intellectual face", which enacts a hierarchy of whiteness on the 'darkness. Finally, the narrator's use of the word "type" evokes nineteenth-century scientists' attempts to form racial types, or guidelines for distinguishing whites from other races. Studies that have attempted to analyze Aminadab – particularly its name – have been largely unsuccessful. Alfred Reid, W. R. Thompson, and Hugo McPherson argue that Hawthorne derived the name "Aminadab" from a biblical source (Rees 171), while Edward Van Winkle suggests that "Aminadab" is an anagram for "bad soul" or even "bad in Man." While some of these critical studies of Aminadab's origin reflect intelligent thinking, only one is compelling enough to be discussed here, and that is the suggestion that Hawthorne's Aminadab bears a significant resemblance to Caliban, from Shakespeare's The Tempest. The similarities between the two characters were suggested by Karl Wentersdorf and summarized in an article by John Rees. Rees observes: Both these clod creatures are darkly ugly, strong but stunted in growth, well suited to their menial jobs, and secretly critical of their masters; these masters in turn use 'earth' and related epithets to describe them both, and emphasize the predominance of animality and the physical in their shared nature... (179)He goes on to say that "even Caliban's obscene cackle, when he recalls the his attempt to rape Miranda (I.ii.349-51), seems a foreshadowing of Aminadab's "coarse hoarse cackle" as he watches the sleeping Georgiana's face and his imagination, 'If she were my wife...'" (179 ). Finally, Rees notes that "Aminadab" repeats the vowel sequence of "Caliban," as well as two of its four consonants" (179). The comparison between Aminadab and Caliban is particularly useful because postcolonial literary critics have often read Caliban as a figure representative of the colonized and racialized "other." The Tempest, published in 1611, was partly inspired by a letter to England written by William Stratchey, detailing the voyage of the ship's crew, who set sail in 1609 to help. to colonize New England, he met astorm and was stranded on the island of Bermuda, known as "Devil's Island" (Langbaum 92, Shakespeare's Caliban, originally from the island that Prospero usurps, is often interpreted as representing). subject of European colonialists, both as a Bermudian and as a Native American. Exploiting Caliban's association with the colonized and racialized "other," Hawthorne draws the reader's attention to his resemblance to Aminadab to present Aylmer as a white colonizer. male, and to reinforce the racial undercurrent of the story. The detail that most strongly links Caliban to Aminadab as a racialized "other" is his physical appearance. In the dramatis personae, Shakespeare describes him as "a wild and deformed slave" (Signet edition). First, the word “savage” evokes the imperial vocabulary that colonists used to describe natives. Secondly, the word “deformed” suggests that his body is physically inferior. Stephen calls him a "monster" (III, ii, 3), while Trinculo observes that he looks and smells like a "fish" (II, ii, 25-27). In his characterization of Caliban, Shakespeare uses a type: the colonized native is enslaved and described as dark and physically deformed. This idea of ​​physical deformity as part of a type is strikingly similar to the racial types of nineteenth-century America. Shakespeare's use of physical deformity to define Caliban as a racial type was revived in nineteenth-century studies of phrenology, craniology, and physiognomy, portraying non-whites as physically inferior to the Caucasian model of perfection. Shakespeare also addresses the issue of miscegenation when Caliban laments his failure to rape Prospero's white daughter, Miranda: “O ho, O ho! with Calibani" (I, ii, 349-351). Hawthorne takes up the theme of miscegenation in his story when Aminadab reflects, “If she were my wife, I would never part with that desire” (2229). Although we can never ascertain Hawthorne's reasons for choosing the name "Aminadab" with absolute certainty, it is useful to explore his similarities to Caliban; both Aminadab and Caliban represent the racialized "other" and are placed in opposition and submission to a superior, dominant white male who wishes to preserve his own heritage. Given the presence of a racial undercurrent in the story, the reader may wonder what Hawthorne's thoughts are. attitude is towards these issues of race. At the most basic level, the story can be read as a rejection of white supremacist logic. Georgiana's death demonstrates the failure of Aylmer's project, which is to carry on the legacy of the white middle class. Unsurprisingly, it is Georgiana's whiteness that kills her in the end, as Aylmer exclaims "But she's so pale!" immediately before his death. The death of the "now perfect woman" (2235) seems to suggest Hawthorne's disapproval of Aylmer's intentions and of white supremacy in general. Furthermore, the "raucous, cackling laugh" that falls from Aminadab's lips at the moment of Georgiana's death suggests that he, the inferior, non-white servant, is the true victor of the story. Despite Georgiana's death at the end of the story, leaving Aylmer without the means to reproduce her, Edgar Allan Poe writes, "the death... of a beautiful woman is, without doubt, the most poetical subject in the world" (qtd. in Lauter , 1533). For Poe, the death of a beautiful woman creates a temporary void, or "deficit" of beauty (which, he notes, is "the only legitimate scope" of his work). That "deficit" will then have to be filled by the narrator, or indirectly, by the author himself. The death of a beautiful woman, therefore, is a kind of inspirationliterary; the dead woman's beauty is replaced by the author's "beauty" or narrative, often in the form of the speaker's confession. "The birth sign" works on the same principle. Georgiana's death serves as inspiration for the speaker's narrative and without her death there would be no story to tell. While she cannot physically produce offspring, she can (in death) give birth to a narrative. Georgiana's death results in the triumph of a white author, carrying on his legacy through fiction. First, Aylmer attempts to prolong life with the Elixir Vitae. Unsuccessful in these goals, he turns to Georgiana, a white woman, to prolong life through physical reproduction. Ultimately, when that fails, the author steps in, prolonging his legacy on the blank pages of books. Once again, the speaker of Shakespeare's Sonnets comes to mind, saying "As long as men can breathe or eyes can see / So long live this, and this gives life to thee" (Sonnet 18). The word "this" is self-referential; while the recipient of the sonnets refuses to procreate and preserve his own image, the speaker responds by saying that the young man's image will be preserved in his poem. Even this logic, however, is not as simple as it seems. Hawthorne encourages us to consider whether words can ever truly replace a human life. If so, then perhaps the white perpetrator trumps all other factors. If not, however, then we need to look further. What readers are left with today is the title of the story, "The Sign of Birth," which also indicates the sign of racial color. What confuses our attempt to interpret Hawthorne's attitude is the conflation of signifier and signified. On the one hand, the title of the story (and consequently the legacy of whiteness) lives on on the blank pages of our books. On the other hand, however, the meaning also survives through the title, symbolizing the color of the race. We are therefore faced with the question: what does it mean? Does (the birthmark) prevail over the title ("The Birth-Mark")? If so, should we then read the story as a rejection of white racism? Considering all these factors, I believe the story is, in fact, a condemnation of white racism. As Smith points out, photography was vital to the preservation of the white middle class in the nineteenth century. However, photographs, like all memories, fade with time. Smith demonstrates this notion in a quote from RHE's Godey's Lady's Book, written in April 1867: It somehow gives me a feeling of desolation to think that my faded picture will be dragged along in a few hundred years like worthless lumber, or that I will be tolerated as a matter of habit. , rather than affection, in some out-of-the-way corner. Maybe one day naughty children will stick pins in my eyes and scratch my cheeks and no one will be hurt or angry. (qtd. in Smith 51) RHE's anxiety over the fading of his portrait symbolizes the white middle class's anxiety over the fading of his heritage, particularly through a process of weakening, caused by miscegenation. Like photographs, pages also yellow and fade over time. The pages of a book are, like Georgiana, fallible, and the extant original copies of "The Birth-Mark" certainly illustrate the fallibility of the written word. Furthermore, only the words have survived, not the characters themselves. This highlights the error in Poe's statement about the death of a beautiful woman. Especially in his use of the refrain, Poe emphasizes the emptiness of the words on the page, words that are incapable of replacing a human life. Therefore, to say that the legacy of whiteness is preserved in the pages of "The Birth-Mark" is to swear by it. 1970; 8: 131-33