On a basic level, he succeeds in removing the birthmark. In this sense, perhaps Aylmer does achieve his goal. And if a person has already died, then they are in a sense no longer mortal-at least, they can’t die again. This achievement would put him at the pinnacle of science and on a level with God, a position which he does pursue even in his less ambitious attempts at changing nature.įurthermore, one exchange between Georgiana and Aylmer suggests that a poison is in fact an elixir of life, or, as Aylmer says, an “elixir of immortality.” He seems to imply that death brings about some sort of immortality in itself, which corresponds to the Christian view of heaven as a place where souls will forever reside. He sees the birthmark as a mark of mortality, and wants to remove it, which would logically result in immortality. Even though Aylmer claims to believe it would be immoral to create an elixir of life because it would unbalance nature, it seems a distinct possibility that his desire to render his wife immortal is an almost unconscious one. Aylmer and Georgiana discuss the elixir of life, a drink that would make its drinker immortal, multiple times. In Aylmer’s view, it doesn’t seem to matter how perfect Georgiana is-she still has that birthmark, that constant reminder that she’ll die and in death will be degraded to the exact same level as all of nature’s other creations. But while flaws are often thought of in moral terms, the flaw represented by the birthmark can also be seen as a purely mechanical one, a symbol of the fact that humans are flawed in that they are not immortal, in that they are destined to die. The birthmark, in this view, is like nature’s brand on its product – Georgiana – to mark it as flawed. On one level, the birthmark stands for mortality, and Aylmer’s obsession with the mark reflects his obsession with and fear of mortality itself.
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