One connection that could be made between the monster and weather is that it seems like every time the weather is good and he’s in a good mood something bad happens to the monster. The day that he decided to approach old man De Lacey the weather was good and he was completely rejected by the family. The day after had “pleasant sunshine” that was said to brighten his mood for him only to find that the family packed up and moved. Again there is wonderful weather on the first day of spring in which he saves a girls life and then gets attacked for doing so. The last event that the monster himself described was his encounter with William. It was said that there was a nice breeze and good weather but the monster kills the innocent child because of his family. It just seems that when good weather is mixed with the monster it happens to be a bad omen.

While it is easy to call Victor selfish for creating a horrible monster that kills and is dangerous the fact that he wasn’t originally aware that this would be the case should be considered. Initially, Victor’s intentions of making the monster weren’t really selfish. He wanted to make a difference in the science community like those he read about as opposed to doing nothing to test his scientific knowledge. Had the experiment gone well and led to some amazing scientific discovery that he could have shared people would call him a genius that helped the world but because the outcome was bad he gets considered selfish for his doings. The decisions he makes after the monster was born could be considered selfish but not his initial creation of the monster.

Frankenstein does have all responsibility of the creation of the monster, the deaths of both William and Justine as well as the possible future deaths of his family but did was he not taking some responsibility by thinking to the future about what this new creature could do to people? His consideration of all the possible outcomes of making another monster that was stronger, bigger and faster than normal human beings should be considered a smart, responsible decision. He not only considered what would happen to his family and his happiness but innocent bystanders that could possibly killed by these monsters and all their possible children.

Both Frankenstein and his monster have issues controlling the strong emotions that they both possess. The most obvious instance of this would be the result of the Monsters anger at both Frankenstein and the rejection of the Delaceys. He kills an innocent child because of his own childlike inability to control his own emotions for long enough to think about what he is doing. Victor while he doesn’t directly kills anyone from his emotions still doesn’t possess the strength to understand that his obsessive behavior is essentially just as dangerous to others as physically hurting them. In the same way Victor also displays is inability to control anything that he feels in a healthy manner by shutting the rest of the world out in a selfish way.

It seems as if the birthmark tries to emphasize the way that science gets into a person’s head. One of the points that Hawthorne was probably trying to make would be the way that scientists get overly enthused with their projects and all of sudden their priorities are completely shattered. Instead of being focused some on his work and some on his wife, Aylmer became obsessed with being able to fix the birthmark placed on his otherwise beautiful wife’s cheek. The result of his obsession, the death of Georgiana, shows what people thought would happen if science was to continue advancing. The same thing happens to Victor Frankenstein’s priorities in “Frankenstein” and it results in the same thing: Death.

As said before in The Ancient Mariner, The Castle of Otranto, and The Fall of the House of Usher seems that the work starts with the death of what seems like an unimportant character and then progresses the plot of the stories. The Birthmark is different than the three books above because as opposed to a death starting the story, death brings it to a close. All the devices that are typical of a gothic work lead up to science and change killing Georgiana as opposed to older views coming into play like the incestual relations and the arranged marriages.

Something that should be pointed it out is that while the female in “The Birthmark” has what seems like only physical worth. She is described as having perfect beauty that is only intensified by the birthmark on her cheek while Frankenstein has a woman who is not only described as beautiful but as having wonderful morals and personality. It’s important to note that the work that has a woman only accredited for her beauty was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a man, while Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley, a woman. The difference of the two shows that how women wished to be viewed differed greatly from how men actually viewed them.

While today’s society looks upon scientific exploration in a good light the stories that we have read such as “Frankenstein” and “The Birthmark” look at it as something that shouldn’t be done. It’s apparent that the study of new things frightened people of those times as in the stories the “discoveries” lead to death. These deaths could represent the beliefs that people were losing as creations and discoveries in nature are made.

Marriage seems to be an inevitable part of the plot that twists its way around the activities of certain characters and drives the story forward by causing some sort of issue in all the Gothic works we have read. The Birthmark represents marriage as an unequal relationship represented with a young female that being forced into an unwanted situation by a tyrannical male that will not rest until his own desires our fulfilled. Aylmer fights to remove the birthmark Georgiana has on her face, despite his wife specifically requesting the blemish to stay where God wished for it to be, and eventually his selfish desire leads to his wives untimely demise. Marriage no matter which particular work is involved some way in the death of a character or is needed in order to tell the story.