Showing posts with label Hawthorne. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hawthorne. Show all posts

The Birthmark, by Nathaniel Hawthorne





Audiobook


Nathaniel Hawthorne, by Remedios Benéitez 


BIOGRAPHY 

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July the 4th, 1804, Salem, Massachusetts, and died on May the 19th, 1864, Plymouth, New Hampshire). He was an American dark romantic novelist and short-story writer. His works often focus on history, morality and religion.
An ancestor, William Hawthorne, was the first of his family to emigrate from England to America in 1630.

Nathaniel was the only son of Nathaniel and Elisabeth Clark Hawthorne. His father, a sea captain, died in 1808 of yellow fever. After that, her mother moved back into her parent’s house with her children.

With the help of relatives. Nathaniel entered Bowdoin College in 1821 and graduated in 1825.

He published his first work in 1828, the novel Fanshawe. He published several short stories in periodicals, which he collected in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales.

He worked at the Boston Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, where he met his future wife, Sophia Peabody. They got married in 1842. The couple rented a home in Concord where they were neighbours with writers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and the Alcott family.

The Hawthorns struggled with debt and a growing family, and eventually returned to Salem in 1845. There he worked a few years as Surveyor of the Port at the Salem Custom House.

Hawthorne published his most well-known work, The Scarlet Letter, shortly after, in 1850, bringing him fame and financial relief. He then began working on The House of Seven Gables, a novel based on an old family, the Pyncheons, in Salem.

He was appointed to the consulship in Liverpool, England, by his old college friend president Franklin Pierce (14th USA president). While in Europe, he wrote The Marble Faun and Our Old Home before moving back to his house in Concord in 1860.

Hawthorne suffered from poor health in 1860, and died in his sleep during a trip to the White Mountains in 1864.

 

THE BIRTHMARK

Aylmer is a brilliant scientist and natural philosopher who has abandoned his experiments for a while to marry the beautiful Georgiana. One day, Aylmer asks his wife whether she has ever thought about removing the birthmark on her cheek. He thinks that her face is almost perfect, but he wants to remove it. She is angry at first, and then she weeps, asking how he can love her if she is shocking to him.

He obsesses about the birthmark. He can think of nothing else. For him, it symbolizes mortality and sin. He wants to remove it, even if it ends her life. Finally, she agrees for love.


QUESTIONS

Talk about the characters:

Aylmer

Georgiana

Aminadab

What is exactly “natural philosophy”? (27, 2)

“A spiritual affinity more attractive than any chemical one” (27, 3-4). Do you know what do people mean when they talk about “elective affinities”?

Is there any scientific explanation for a birthmark?

Can you describe Georgiana’s birthmark?

Why do you think Aylmer didn’t see it before marrying her, or why did it appear after getting married?

Why did Aylmer, and then Georgiana, want to erase her birthmark?

In the story, Aylmer has a dream.  Can you tell us this dream? For you, what are the meaning of dreams?

Do you know the myth of Pygmalion?

Can you find a similitude between this story and the legend of Faust?

The story tells us that a lot of Aylmer experiments are failures and there is a risk for Georgiana’s life if he tries to delete her birthmark. Why do they want to take risks so dangerous?

Do you think there’s any relation between the birthmark and the speck in the saying, “You can see the speck in your friend’s eye, but you don’t notice the log that is in your own eye"? What were Aylmer flaws in this case?

Do you know who were these people: Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus? And what was the Brazen Head?

What do you know about alchemy?

According to your opinion, what is the meaning of Georgiana’s birthmark? Remember that when Aylmer removes it, she dies.

 

VOCABULARY

votaries, weaned, charm, wont, fastidious, flaw, aught, shudder, affrighting, bears witness, mar, patentee, boudoir, pastil, lore, sway, thence, concoct, heretofore, penned, shortcomings, quaff, rapt, musings, goblet, lofty, ere, clod