Nina Baym seems to be agreeable with her stance regarding Hawthorne and his work. There is evidence in The Scarlet Letter, as well as The Birth-Mark both by Hawthorne. Her stance mentions that she believes that Hawthorne represents himself as a feminist within the novels and stories he has written.
Throughout the Birth-Mark readers are constantly shown a conflict between nature and science, or as the text says the love of science rivaling the love of women. The main character goes by them name Aylmer, who is a successful scientist who abandoned his work to marry Georgiana, his wife. Georgiana has a birth mark on her cheek, and when Aylmer questions whether she would ever want to get it removed she takes it very seriously. As for other outside opinions, men think it is admirable and some women believe it ruins her beauty. Hawthorne disagrees with the women calling out their nonsense. Aylmer tries to remove the birth mark off of his wife’s cheek by giving her a potion. This potion seemed to be erasing the birth mark but ends up killing Georgiana in the process.
This story represents how Hawthorne incorporates feminism into his work. One of the biggest themes I got from this is how society and other people’s opinions often times sway a woman’s confidence, making her want to change to fit society’s standards. Georgiana is the perfect example of this due to the talk about her birth mark. She literally was perfect besides the birth mark on her cheek but was still affected by both her husband’s opinion and other women’s opinions regarding her own face. This in turn leads to her fate. The feminist within Hawthorne shows because of the entire theme of this story. It also goes back to Nina Baym’s original statement saying that Hawthorne uses male fantasies about women and “real” women struggling to fit into the normal category. This fits in directly to the plot and theme of this story.
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