People have always lived in a world filled with fantasies; in most cases these fantasies or ideals are ones thought up by kids who want to be superheroes, professional athletes and even royalty. It’s when we become adults that these fantasies become a problem and unacceptable by society, but there is one fantasy that will linger and in some cases stay’s forever. This fantasy is called perfection, it’s a form of idealism and impossible to obtain. “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the many works of literature that focuses on this theme of idealism vs. transcendentalism and the battle with the fantasy of obtaining perfection.
The thought of obtaining perfection is an idealist and impossible fantasy that shows up throughout Hawthorne’s short story “The Birthmark”. “Dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly imperfection"(219 Hawthorne). This exemplifies the theme idealism and this desire to obtain perfection. In the short story Aylmer’s idealistic desire to obtain his wife’s perfection caused him to develop an obsession, much like one a person develops with a drug that will never be fulfilled or satisfied. People today feel this same idealistic desire that drove Aylmer mad, the only difference is that they use technology not elixirs to try and fix these imperfections. This use of technology ranges from filters on phones and apps like Instagram to plastic surgery. All cases and usages have the same end product they don’t result in happiness, the individual will develop a new flaw that needs to be fixed in order to become happy and to obtain this feeling of perfection. Someone might ask, why would someone not feel perfect and after they get this flaw fixed? The answer is simple; they lost some of their humanity and natural beauty in the process and lost some of their transcendental spirit.
The transcendental spirit is how people connect with nature and the true and pure beauty that people are born with. Idealism is the nemesis of transcendentalism and an individual can never be both. A prime example of this is shown in Hawthorne’s piece “The Birthmark” when Aylmer removes Georgiana’s birthmark. By doing so he destroys her uniqueness that was given by god and once this natural beauty is taken away the individual loses something, in Georgiana’s case, it was her life. People today need to find a balance between idealism and transcendentalism to acquire happiness and by doing so people will discover that you can’t have perfection without flaws.
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