The Birth-mark is about a mad scientist who can’t bare to look at a small blemish on his wife’s face, and as a result sets out to remove her “terrible” flaw. Aylmer, the aforementioned scientist, is obsessed with the idea of attaining perfection in all areas of his life. He tried to attain perfection in all his scientific endeavors, but often with his successes came failures. And to him, a small blemish on his wife’s face was simply unacceptable. He could not get the birth-mark off his mind. He thought about it day and night–he even dreamed about it. His wife, Georgiana, was desperate to make her husband happy and to fulfill his desire of removing it because she wanted so badly for Aylmer to look at her lovingly again.
Hills Like White Elephants is an extremely short story about a young girl named Jig and an American man who seems to have impregnated her. They are discussing whether or not Jig should get an abortion, although this is never explicitly stated in the text. But how does this relate to The Birth-mark?
Well, for starters, the serious conversations these two couples have are similar. Although it doesn’t seem serious to worry so much about a birth-mark, the end result shows that Georgiana’s decision to have Aylmer remove it definitely was not a joking matter (since it led to her death). In Hills Like White Elephants the topic is abortion, which is of course a much more serious conversation, but the outcome of which is also very life-changing. In both these stories, the women show their willingness to make huge sacrifices, as long as they think these sacrifices will make their men love them more. Georgiana says, on page 263-264, “If there be the remotest possibility of it, let the attempt be made, at whatever risk. Danger is nothing to me; for life–while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror and disgust–life is a burthen which I would fling down by joy….” She’s willing to die because she can’t bare to live with a birth mark that makes her husband shutter at her, how shameful. Same thing with Jig. On page 168 she says “And if I do it you’ll be happy and things will be like they were and you’ll love me?…Then I’ll do it. Because I don’t care about me.” If you ask me, both these women seem a bit naive. Jig is very young, so I guess that’s expected. But Georgiana is already married to Aylmer and it seems that she’s not so young, and yet she is so naive, choosing death over life with a facial flaw.
In both these stories there seems to be a dependency on science. Aylmer is a scientist who is confident that he can remove Georgiana’s birth-mark, when there’s really no certainty of this at all. And this story was written a while ago, so clearly there was no certainty (just like there’s no 100% guarantee nowadays, either) that Jig’s abortion would have gone smoothly because there was a lack of technology and proper sanitary measures were not being taken. So in both stories, science is being depended and relied on when really there’s no guarantee that it will work.
Hills Like White Elephants is also quite different from the Birth-Mark, though. For example, we don’t know how Hills ends. We can only make assumptions and inferences based on the very little information we’re given in the text. On the other hand, we see that Georgiana’s life is taken and (although this is arguable) Aylmer and Georgiana did not really live happily ever after (considering that one of them didn’t live at all).
Another difference is that Hills has a very urgent tone to it, because Jig and the American are in a train station and the train’s coming in 5 minutes, so their conversation is in a way rushed and there’s a finality to the decision, because there’s such a small time constraint. In The Birth-mark, however, the tone is not so urgent because there’s no definite time constraint, although you get the sense that Aylmer’s personality dictates a deadline for removing the birthmark, which is ASAP.
Also, to build on that, both stories have a finality to it. Birthmark is final in that the birthmark is removed but Georgiana’s life is taken, and clearly this cannot be undone. Hills is final because the decision will be made and most likely kept once the train arrives and they go forward with their lives. If Jig does get an abortion, a potential human will be terminated from existence, and if she does not go through with it, the American may leave her.
Both of these stories seem to display women in a desperate light. They seem to be hinting at an idea that women will do anything as long as they can keep feeling loved by men, and whether this desperation is healthy can definitely be argued. One may say that Jig and Georgiana ought to have more self-respect, and ought to demand that respect from the men in their lives (especially Georgiana. Seriously, Aylmer can’t accept ONE little birth-mark? Let’s get real… nobody’s perfect). On the other hand, it can be seen as very sweet and sentimental that the women in these stories are so deeply in love with their men that they will do anything to make them happy. Personally, I don’t think this is healthy unless those same sweet, sacrificial feelings are reciprocated to these ladies.
Are these women too dependent on men? What do you guys think?
