40 Fun Facts About The Birth-Mark

In Hawthorne's "The Birth-Mark", the crimson mark on Georgiana's face is shaped like what?

A tiny hand is what the narrator sees in it, though envious women called it the bloody hand and said it spoiled her looks.

What happens to Georgiana as the last trace of the mark fades at the end of "The Birth-Mark"?

She dies the moment the mark vanishes, because it was the bond tying her spirit to her body. Aylmer's cure works and costs him his wife.

In Aylmer's dream in "The Birth-Mark", the mark sinks deeper under his knife until it reaches what?

Her heart is where the mark ends up in the dream, yet Aylmer remains resolved to cut it away. He remembers none of it until Georgiana prompts him.

Aylmer proves his final potion in "The Birth-Mark" by curing the yellow blotches on which plant?

A geranium on the window seat loses its blotches minutes after he pours the liquid on its soil. Georgiana tells him she needed no proof.

In "The Birth-Mark", Aylmer's servant mutters that if Georgiana were his wife he would do what?

Never part with it is his verdict: the soot-stained labourer sees nothing wrong with the mark that horrifies his refined master.

Georgiana's admirers in "The Birth-Mark" said which being touched her face at birth to make the mark?

A fairy, they said, had marked the baby in token of the magic gifts that would win her so many admirers.

What happens to the magical fast-growing flower in "The Birth-Mark" the moment Georgiana touches it?

Its leaves blacken as if scorched, and the whole plant is blighted. Aylmer shrugs it off as too strong a stimulus, the first of several experiments to go wrong.

What does Aylmer do with the blurred metal-plate likeness he makes of Georgiana in "The Birth-Mark"?

Aylmer throws it in acid after the plate shows her features as a blur, with only the mark showing sharply where her face should be.

In "The Birth-Mark", the gold-coloured liquid Georgiana admires in Aylmer's cabinet is really what?

A deadly poison, Aylmer says, so exact that the dose decides whether a victim lingers for years or drops mid-breath. He also calls it an elixir of immortality.

At what point in "The Birth-Mark" does Georgiana's mark first begin to trouble the scientist Aylmer?

Soon after the wedding is when it starts; before then he had thought little or nothing of it. Georgiana asks why he took her from her mother's side if she shocks him.

What is the name of Aylmer's shaggy laboratory assistant in Hawthorne's "The Birth-Mark"?

Aminadab has worked for Aylmer through his whole career, carrying out every experiment without grasping a single principle behind it.

Hawthorne's "The Birth-Mark" places Georgiana's crimson mark in the centre of which part of her face?

Her left cheek carries the mark, which the narrator calls deeply interwoven with the texture of her skin instead of lying on its surface.

Georgiana tells Aylmer in "The Birth-Mark" that she had so often heard her mark called what?

A charm is what people had called it so often that she half believed them, until Aylmer told her that it shocked him.

For Aylmer in "The Birth-Mark", the mark on his wife's face becomes the visible sign of what?

Earthly imperfection is what he reads into it: proof that even Georgiana is liable to sin, sorrow and decay like every other mortal.

What does Georgiana do almost at once after drinking Aylmer's final potion in "The Birth-Mark"?

She falls asleep within moments, after praising the draught's fragrance and saying it has quenched a thirst that had parched her for days.

The final draught Aylmer brings Georgiana in a crystal goblet in "The Birth-Mark" looks like what?

Clear water is what it resembles: a colourless liquid, yet bright enough, the narrator says, to be the draught of immortality.

Which recent discovery does the opening of "The Birth-Mark" say made science seem miraculous?

Electricity was a novelty in the late 1700s, when the tale is set, and the narrator says a love of science could then rival the love of a woman.

Promising success in "The Birth-Mark", Aylmer likens his coming joy to that of which figure from Greek myth?

Pygmalion's statue came alive in the myth, and Aylmer boasts that his own ecstasy at correcting Nature's fairest work will be just as great.

As Aylmer leads Georgiana into his laboratory in "The Birth-Mark", what reaction of his makes her faint?

He shudders at the sight of the mark, though he had only meant to give her a reassuring look. She later tells him she cannot forget it.

Which sound from Aylmer's servant is heard again at the very end of Hawthorne's "The Birth-Mark"?

A hoarse laugh, the servant's usual sign of delight, sounds as the mark fades and again at the close. The narrator hears in it the triumph of matter over spirit.

In "The Birth-Mark", Aylmer's servant is said to represent which side of man?

The physical side of man is the servant's half of the pairing, with his vast strength and grime, while slender, bookish Aylmer stands for the spiritual.

Muttering at the furnace in "The Birth-Mark", Aylmer calls his assistant a machine and a man of what?

Clay suits the assistant's heavy, grimy bulk, and Aylmer mutters the insult while the two of them watch the furnace distil the final potion.

Aylmer shows Georgiana a cosmetic in "The Birth-Mark" that he says will wash away which skin marks?

Freckles would rinse off with a few drops, he says, while a stronger dose would drain the blood from a rosy face. He rules it out for her as merely superficial.

In "The Birth-Mark", Aylmer's journal shows Georgiana that his most splendid successes were mostly what?

Failures, measured against the ideal he aimed at: his brightest diamonds were pebbles beside the gems out of reach. She loves him more for it, but trusts his judgment less.

In "The Birth-Mark", Aylmer tells the weeping Georgiana it is dangerous to read whose books?

A sorcerer's books, he says with an uneasy smile on finding her in tears over his journal, adding that some of its pages could cost him his senses.

After catching Georgiana reading his journal in "The Birth-Mark", Aylmer asks her to do what for him?

Sing to him is the request, since he says he came looking for the luxury of her voice. He goes off in boyish high spirits, assuring her the result is already certain.

In "The Birth-Mark", what does the angry Aylmer leave on Georgiana's arm when she enters his laboratory?

His finger marks stay printed on her arm as he calls her a prying woman and orders her out, afraid the mark will blight his work.

In "The Birth-Mark", what does Aylmer do to the mark on impulse after Georgiana drinks the potion?

He kisses it once, on a strange impulse, and his spirit recoils even as he does so. Georgiana stirs and murmurs as if in protest.

In "The Birth-Mark", the mark on Georgiana's face stands out most sharply when she does what?

She turns pale and the mark shows like a crimson stain on snow, whereas a blush hides it completely in the rush of blood.

How does Georgiana see for herself that Aylmer's potion has nearly erased the mark in "The Birth-Mark"?

In a mirror that Aylmer had set up for the purpose, she sees how faint the mark has become, and a smile crosses her lips.

Seven years after "The Birth-Mark", Hawthorne published which novel about the outcast Hester Prynne?

The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, was one of the first mass-produced books in the United States and is commonly listed among the Great American Novels.

Hawthorne wrote "The Birth-Mark" as a newlywed renting a house in which Massachusetts town?

Concord drew the couple to a parsonage that rented for $100 a year, where Ralph Waldo Emerson had earlier drafted his essay Nature.

Hawthorne wrote "The Birth-Mark" within a year of marrying which Salem-born woman?

Sophia Peabody was a painter who earned money from her own canvases, and the pair married at her family's Boston bookshop in July 1842.

Which Hawthorne story collection, named after a house he rented, includes "The Birth-Mark"?

Mosses from an Old Manse took its name from the parsonage where the author spent the first three years of his marriage, and it gathered tales already printed in magazines.

"The Birth-Mark" made its first appearance in which short-lived Boston literary magazine?

The Pioneer was the poet James Russell Lowell's new monthly, and it died with its third issue, the March 1843 number that carried the tale.

Which Edgar Allan Poe tale about a man absorbed in his work shares its theme with "The Birth-Mark"?

The Oval Portrait appeared in 1842, the year before: a painter finishes his wife's picture and finds her dead. Poe's biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn called the likeness of theme apparent.

"The Birth-Mark" belongs, like most Hawthorne fiction, to which movement shared with Edgar Allan Poe?

Dark romanticism stresses human fallibility and proneness to sin, in contrast to the hopeful creed of the Transcendentalists.

Aylmer's shelves in "The Birth-Mark" hold Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa and which Swiss alchemist?

Paracelsus shares the shelf with old naturalists who, the narrator says, stood ahead of their centuries yet fancied they had gained power over the spiritual world.

In "The Birth-Mark", Georgiana browses early Transactions of which London scientific body?

The Royal Society's early members, the narrator says, knew little of the limits of natural possibility and kept recording wonders or ways to work them.

Why does Georgiana first follow Aylmer into his working laboratory in "The Birth-Mark"?

To report a symptom she had forgotten to mention: for two or three hours the mark had given off a restless feeling, though no pain.