Perfection In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

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Perfection is a goal that will never be attained in this lifetime. Through greed, Aylmer’s desire for perfection leads him to pursue the hand on his spouse’s cheek, instead of pursuing the hand he took in marriage. He craves to see if he can “give himself peace” because he is “convinced of the perfect practicability of its removal” (Hawthorne 307). He hypothesized the conclusion to his scientific test and his theory of a perfect wife made the pleasure of the experiment worth more than the pleasure of spending life with his spouse. His longing for perfection in his wife affects his choices. He could choose to see her flaw as beautiful or he could choose to divorce her. He could choose to see the loyal, dedicated, and submissive qualities of…show more content…
This demonstrates the selflessness in the way she loves him. Satisfying his desire for a more perfect wife is worth more to her than her own convenience. “Aylmer never truly sees his wife; even while she is dying” (Rosenberg 147). He misses her true beauty, because he is blinded by his lust for her perfection. The root of him perceiving her as his operation game rather than his wife roots from his delight in control and perfection. He oversees those deep, striking, eternal qualities that lie within his wife and chooses instead to remove her one flaw. Aylmer tells Georgiana, “I feel myself fully competent to render this dear cheek as faultless as its fellow” (Hawthorne 307), and through his perceived self-supremacy, he creates a liquid chemical that indeed sucked the birthmark from the cheek of his wife, causing the mark to be “well nigh gone” (Hawthorne 315). His desire for perfection and the choice of removing the mysterious dash, results in his experiment ending in perfection. Only he doesn’t get to experience it. Dying, she has left this earth and taken her flawlessness with her (Hawthorne
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