"".
The birthmark, although not a problem before, begins to grow into a mockery in Aylmer's eyes. He saw the hand as something he could not fix, as if it "wrote mortality- upon his wife. As Georgiana realized what the birthmark was doing to her husband, she would begin to grow pale when he looked at her. The paleness of her skin would set off the birthmark even more, "like a bass-relief of ruby on the whitest marble- causing even more angst for Aylmer. Georgiana knows that her husband can no longer stand the mark and as long as she has it, he cannot look at her the way he once had. With this, Hawthorne begins to show us the rift between science and nature. Although the two should go hand-in-hand, science cannot help but look at nature as flawed and want to improve upon what is there, however perfect it may already seem. .
Aylmer turns to his first love, science, and begins to search for ways to rid Georgiana of the birthmark. Although he has done many great things as a scientist, he refuses to recognize "the truth "against which all seekers sooner or later stumble "that our great creative Mother . . . is yet severely careful to keep her own secrets . . . She permits us, indeed, to mar, but seldom to mend, and like a jealous patentee, on no account to make-. Hawthorne seems to believe that Mother Nature, in all her infinite wisdom, needs no improving, and furthermore will not permit it to be. Although on some level Aylmer probably knows this, he refuses to believe that he can't improve upon his near perfect wife. He now rejoices "in this single imperfection, since it will be such a rapture to remove it-. .
Aylmer's many experiments we see in this story all seem to revolve around perfecting nature, and each one fails. He shows Georgiana a flower that grows from seed to bloom in a matter of seconds, and withers and dies just as fast. He tries to capture her image in what seems to be some sort of camera prototype, but the image is blurred and distorted except for the hand of Nature, the birthmark.