hi guyz i am new to dis forum newayz i jsut wanted to share w/ u my hobby wich is analysis of 19th century ltierature particualryl romanticism as a litarary genre newayz this is a little sumthing i cooked up hope u enjoy it ttyl :) :) :)

A 19th Century View of Disability:
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Understanding the Cultural Construction of Normality

Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the greatest writers of the 1800’s, and as such, he was as profound as he was prolific. While many of his stories are simply gothic accounts about his own time, a few of them show remarkable insight into the future of civilized society. In two of his stories, “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” and “The Birthmark”, Hawthorne contemplates the issue of disability with extraordinarily modern and progressive views. Hawthorne’s forward thinking in the two tales encode subtle criticisms (although in very different ways) of prevalent depictions of disability in his time, claiming that impairment is not something that needs to be ostracized and removed by scientific tools or procedures, but rather accepted and embraced socially by viewing the body as something which is not identified by mere physical impairment but instead by the character which truly defines it.
Hawthorne’s two stories have much more in common than simple suggestions of individualism and the advocacy of feelings over reason. Indeed, the plots of “The Birthmark” and “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” are so similar that they initially seem almost as if they are two different versions of the same story. In both tales, there is an ailment that a potion is used to supposedly cure and the alleged cure ends up being more trouble than it is worth. The similarities, however, seemingly stop there. The Birthmark’s cure is a tonic that destroys whereas Heidegger’s potion is an elixir that rejuvenates. The ailing characters who take these remedies also appear to differ markedly from each other in the two works and the depictions of the noble and ignoble scientists offer contrasting views on the role of medicine as a “redeemer” of the impaired.
As the characters and concoctions suggest, the stories, at first, seem to be inversions of one another. Dr. Aylmer’s cold intellectuality corresponds directly with Dr. Heidegger’s four corrupt patients, whereas Heidegger himself, along with his deceased love, are initially more identified with the subject of Aylmer’s experimentation, his innocent wife Georgiana. As such, it seems to be perfect sense that Heidegger does not force his potion of youth onto his patients: it is portrayed as a generous offering. Aylmer, on the other hand, demonstrates incomprehensible madness in aggressively baiting his wife into undergoing treatment for her birthmark. Despite differences on the surface, the ways in which the doctors carry themselves with their patients imply the same ideas about the nature of disability as seen through a medical model.
Aylmer’s claim that Georgiana “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” shows an important facet of the construction of disability in the text. Indeed, disability is quite literally built by Aylmer in the story, as the birthmark “heighten[s] the admiration” of other “masculine observers.” Aylmer’s vision of his wife as something pristine and beautiful forces him to focus on the one mark of difference, causing find the small hand imprinted upon her cheek “grow more and more intolerable with every moment of their united lives.” Heidegger, however, constructs the disability in his patients by offering them an elixir that changes their conceptions of their bodies. By asking them to take part in one of his “little experiments,” Heidegger shows a reckless lack of sympathy and concern for his four friends, considering that his very own wife “had swallowed one of [his] prescriptions, and died on the bridal evening.” Heidegger does not beseech his guests to drink their potions, but he does fill their glasses knowing full well that they will take part in what his game. Thus, both doctors take a personal stake in their experiment, but unfortunately the results of their efforts concern them more than the well-being of their patients.
The reader is met with two very similar disabilities caused by the doctors, symbolizing the harsh scrutiny of their scientific approaches. Heidegger’s patients are sufferers of old age, but they are on the natural course of a human life. As their bodies age, The impairment of their years is not a reflection of their inner evil, it is a product of their inability to see their bodies as acceptable after they have once again tasted their youth. The fact that Heidegger shares the same age as them and yet does not exhibit the same characteristics as the “melancholy old creatures” reveals an interesting aspect of his personality. He does not view himself as disabled because he accepts the conditions of his old age. In a similar manner, he does not seek to “cure” his old age because he does not consider his body to be something wrong. He knows that there is no way for his old age to be “smoothed away” and that the promise of the elixir is an impermanent contract, a contract that later takes away the souls of his four friends. Aylmer’s wife Georgiana has her impairment initially instilled in her by her husband, whose visual contempt for her birthmark causes her to need only a “glance [from him] with the peculiar expression that his face often wore to change the roses of her cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which the crimson hand was brought strongly out.” It becomes apparent here that the birthmark is used by other people to define her character. Jealous women and adoring men paint her as both a villain and the pinnacle of perfection. It is no accident that the only other character who sees Georgiana in the story, Aylmer’s servant Aminadab, remarks that “if she were [his] wife, [he’d] never part with that birthmark.” Aminadab’s comment reveals the scientific irrationality that is unique to Aylmer, embodied in his villainization of the mark. The point is not specifically that Aylmer has an opinion about the marking, after all, everyone in the story does. It is, in fact, something noticeable. The problem lies in the fact that he has made his wife’s life virtually unlivable through his constant harassment and his consistent begging of her to let him rejoice in the “rapture… [of] remov[ing]” what he sees only as a “bass-relief of ruby on the whitest marble.”
The physical treatments of the patients obviously play into the medical model of disability: they both paint old age and the birthmark as impairments that are unloved and must be weeded out. Aylmer views Georgiana’s birthmark in the visual rhetoric of sentimentality. He sees it as a physical problem that must be solved by the “perfect practicability of its removal.” As such, the drastic steps he takes to solve it result in her death because he is not concerned about her life; he is only concerned with the removal of the marking. In this sense, of course, he succeeds in both the marking’s and his wife’s destruction. His disregard for her health in his quest for victory over the “crimson hand” shapes her into something supernaturally perfect, something which simply does not exist in the frame of human variety. As such, when the birthmark “fade[s] from her check, the parting breath of the now perfect woman pass[es] into the atmosphere,” the mark itself becomes a direct critique of the doctor’s radical methods with which he approached the circumstance. Hawthorne writes that “had Aylmer reached a profounder wisdom he need not thus have flung away the happiness which would have woven his mortal life,” Had he simply learned to accept his wife’s birthmark and not strive for unnatural and impossible perfection, the tragic nature of the tale’s ending could have been avoided.
Heidegger’s patients, at first, seem to be greeted with life instead of death. Immediately upon “drink[ing] off the water… there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspect of the party.” They grow younger as the elixir of youth “smooth[es] away the deep and sad inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on their brows,” and they immediately begin to rejoice. Their youth, however, brings them back to their old evil ways, reflecting exactly upon the Doctor’s statement that it would be “a sin and a shame… if, with your peculiar advantages, you should not become patterns of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age!” Immediately they start to quarrel amongst themselves over the lusty Widow Wycherly, who reverts back to her younger and considerably more vain self. Their immediate reversion to their jealous and sinful ways makes it apparent that the physical impairment of their old age is a direct result of their corrupted personalities, which have become embodied in their material selves. They relapse into their old habits, and as a result of said villainy, immediately spill the rest of the liquid, forcing them back into the “brood of pains” they have grown so accustomed to. The elixir of youth then becomes another mode of impairment upon the departure of its affects, their greedy nature and addictive personalities forcing them to resolve to “make a pilgrimage to Florida, and quaff at [the Fountain of Youth] morning, noon, and night.” Heidegger, whose scientific spirit remains uncorrupted, comments that he would not dream to foolishly follow them, even if the potion’s delirium “lasted for years instead of moments.” In this sense, Heidegger’s patients suffer much the same fate as Aylmer’s wife. Their death is the death of their humanity, losing all reason to attempt to cure something that cannot be cured, but more importantly does not require a cure. Since they believe there is something wrong within them, they propagate the notion of their own disability, constructing it and solidifying it with their ill-fated journey to Florida.
Both stories depict the folly of treating disability by a strict medical model and how unnecessary intervention in disability can end in misfortunate. Both also show how disability is often constructed by external forces rather than by an actual impairment. While the two results of the potions may seem paradoxical at first, it becomes apparent on further analysis that they are in fact analogous to each other. The two stories both result in the death of the patients because of their categorization of their lives as disabled. Georgiana is convinced by her husband’s madness that she becomes physically impaired, even though her birthmark had never previously constituted any difficulty for her. Aylmer’s obsession with the marking causes Georgiana to believe that she is actually disabled by it, and automatically categorizing her perceived disability with something inexplicably negative, she urges him to “either remove this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life!” Similarly, Heidegger’s patients do not see themselves as lacking until they are introduced to the elixir of life, which takes away their years. The doctor’s four elderly guests build up a conceptual impairment in themselves, one which is entirely grounded in external factors. Had Georgiana not been exposed to her husband’s irrational demonization of her birthmark and had Heidegger’s guests not been presented with what they perceive to be a better state of living, the tragedy of both stories could be avoided. Georgiana physically dies, but the souls of the four guests die when they buy into their own perceived impairment, now taking root in their physical bodies, and they can find no solace in their own lives except hunting for the elusive tonic which brought them their youth.
The fight which occurs between the four patients bears much similarity to Aylmer’s irrationality toward his wife, and both unfairly categorize the woman as the one at fault for the ensuing tragedy in the eyes of their would be lovers. Both male parties seek to own the female party they antagonize. Aylmer is not happy with Georgiana and cannot own her until she sheds her imperfection and similarly the three gentlemen in Heidegger’s laboratory, upon gaining their new youth, immediately seek to claim the Widow Wycherly by shouting out offers to dance with her. Aylmer’s attempts to turn his wife into the perfect woman, something that he feels he fit to “worship” as a wife, obviously fail. His demands on her become too much, and by seeking to keep her as entirely his own by removing an integral part of her, he loses her entirely. His inability to let his wife simply exist as she truly is, instead of as being incorrectly defined by her birthmark, end up in her death and his sorrow. The three men, trying to claim the Widow for their own, ultimately both lose their youthful vigor and hers’ as well. Even though their “youthful rivalship” is the true cause of their reversion to old age, her “bewitching beauty” gets blamed by the men as the reason for their misfortune. Interestingly, the men do not court the widow when they are older. Their lack of affection for her as an older lady show that they are only defining her in terms of her age, and as such, in terms of her perceived disability as an elderly woman. Their immediate quarrel over her due to their misconceptions of course makes them lose her in much the same way that Aylmer loses his wife. Even though Georgiana’s loss of her birthmark is described as a “rainbow fading out of the sky” and Heidegger’s patients youth disappearing is described as a “strange chillness… creeping over them,” both cases demonstrate that the longing for unattainable beauty and the inability to accept people for how they truly are always end up in causing both parties much regret and disdain.
Dr. Heidegger’s response to his patients’ return to old age is of particular interest in terms of disability. He feels no anxiety over the issue even though “Father Time” has made him “old and rheumatic.” The dancing escapade isolated him from his guests, and since he acknowledges that his “dancing days were over long ago,” he contents himself to simply watch and not become consumed by the foolish desire to become something that he is not. As such, when the elixir is gone, he is the only one who “bemoan[s] it not.” Heidegger’s statement that even “if the fountain (of youth) gushed at my very doorstep [he] would not stoop to bathe [his] lips in it” informs the reader directly of the folly of dwelling on a misinformed conception of the able-bodied. The forms taken by his guests as a result of the tonic do not represent able-bodied; in fact, they do not even represent the guests themselves. Just like their disability, their perception of what is able-bodied (in this case, their false youth), is constructed entirely by themselves. In much the same vein, Aylmer convinces himself that for his wife to bear her birthmark is not normal or able-bodied- that is, she is not as “good” with the birthmark as she could be without it. Therefore, the birthmark’s removal seems to be a completely rational and informed decision on his part to bring his wife into the cultural norm, in order that he might spare her the anxious lifestyle associated with disability. Both of these cases demonstrate key problems in the perception of disability, because they assume that there is a norm in which their views are grounded. What both doctors realize by the end of the story is that striving to fully entrench people in a nonexistent ideal of normality is unfair to all parties involved. Aylmer feels the consequences of his unfairness on a personal level for his wife is dead, Heidegger sees his old friends consumed by an insufferable madness (ironically a true impairment), both realize the fatal error that led their friends and loved ones to certain disaster.
Hawthorne’s stories may have been written in the 1800’s, but their implications carry far beyond the 19th century. The morals encoded in both tales display the tragedy in equating perceived difference with true impairment as well as attempting to isolate and destroy that constructed disability. The characters in the tales are far from normal- all of them are eccentric and carry unique quirks about them. This is purposeful because it demonstrates that there is no sense of normality within the context of the tales. The characters prescribe to unfortunate notions of ideals without realizing their own differences, as most people in modern society do as well, and as a result they are met with tragically dire consequences. Both stories serve as a statement that rigidly inflexible ways of defining disabilities and bodies are unfair and wrongly accepted within contemporary culture. Though Hawthorne may have been ahead of his time in realizing this, it is certain that even people today could learn a valuable lesson about defining human beings from both of the doctors as well as their unfortunate patients.