Journal on The Birthmark by Hawthorne

While reading through The Birthmark by Hawthorne, I didn’t understand the line that reads, “Even Pygmalion, when his sculptured woman assumed life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will be.” I basically read over that line and didn’t think much of it. But, while reading my peers annotations, jacksonh3 annotated this line and wrote, “This is a historical reference to Pygmalion, a sculptor who fell in love with one of his statues which came to life. Here, Hawthorne compares this myth to how Aylmer will feel after repairing her birthmark.” This annotation really helped me to understand the importance of this historical reference. In the reference, Pygmalion falls in love with something that he created himself, and while creating it, he did so while envisioning perfection because why would someone try to create something that isn’t perfect? So, this relates to The Birthmark because Aylmer was trying to perfect his wife by ridding her of her birthmark, and by doing so, he was sure that he would actually fall in love with her; because clearly in the past he hadn’t been in love with her because he felt such a deep hatred for her birthmark.