Wilson in Hawthorne’s “The Birth-Mark” and Aylmer in Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson”:
The Prisoners of Their Own Minds, Not Institutions
Robert Coskren, in his essay,“William Wilson” And The Disintegration of Self, says that “there exists a basic duality in every human being” (Coskren, 1). In William Wilson, this duality is projected through two corporeal versions of William: one real, the other illusory. Similarly, in Birth-Mark, a psychological war between the internal and external egos is staged by Aylmer and Georgiana. Here, Georgiana, as a domesticated wife at home, is legally and metaphorically, Aylmer’s internal ego. Interestingly, in both of these narratives, the emergence of Wilson and Aylmer’s alter egos happens after their institutionalization, school and marriage, respectively. In both Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Birth-Mark and Edgar Allan Poe’s William Wilson, the protagonists suffer schizophrenic delusions due to their inability to negotiate life’s complexities within the realm of institutions. Either palpable (Georgiana) or impalpable (the illusory Wilson), both narratives cast “the body of alter egos” as a war zone where Aylmer and Wilson challenge them to gain “scientific excellence” and “free will,” respectively. Although, by challenging their alter egos,Wilson and Aylmer seek to remove themselves from institutional insults and oppressions, into that of a pre-institutional, pure-self universe, escape is impossible because they are prisoners of their own minds, not institutions.
It is inevitable that one’s integral self is constantly provoked and contested by external forces, whether they are other fellow human beings or man-made institutions. However, both Wilson and Aylmer feel overwhelmed and assaulted by institutional settings. Quantitatively and qualitatively, both protagonists fare well in a universe of “pure self,” where one’s singular, simple existence is free from external pressures. For instance, for both Wilson and Aylmer, while in their simple existences as a pre-school child and bachelor, they enjoyed tranquility and self-confidence. Their schizophrenic delusional symptoms surface when their identities are no longer a simple pre-school child or a bachelor, but a student and a husband in institutions of academy and marriage, respectively. Their delusional symptoms due to institutionalizations are understandable. Coskren corroborates on this point: She says that “the encounter of the self with a world of others is a devastating insult to the integral will, for it no longer contemplates infinity, only multiplicity” (Coskren, 157 emphasis added). Wilson and Aylmer, too, feel that in a “world of others,” their integral wills are oppressed and insulted (Coskren, 157).
For Wilson, Academy is “a world of others” that which oppresses his free will. The prime focus of William Wilson’s narrative, Coskren says, is “the tension between the internal and the external” (Coskren, 1). For Wilson, the academy is his external force. The academy not only oppresses his will, but it also functions as a magnifying mirror for Wilson’s sub-consciousness; it enlarges his need to exercise his free will. In the academy, Wilson’s strong will is willfully contested, forcefully oppressed, and irreparably tampered with. The effect of academic, institutional oppression is shown in Wilson’s voice as a narrator. His narration intimates the victimization by the academy. For example, when Wilson narrates his pre-school childhood days, he blithely boasts that “at an age when few children have abandoned their leading-strings, [he] was left to the guidance of [his] own will, and became, in all but name, the master of [his] own actions” (4, emphasis added). However, when he “recollect[s]…the school and its concerns” (4), he dreadfully describes it as a “steep…misery” (4). This drastic change of in the tone of the narrator, from confidence to dejection, heightensWilson’s personal prerogative: being “the master of his own actions” (4).
Undoubtedly,Wilson’s tenement in the academy is problematic to his innately strong will. Subconsciously,Wilson admits to this problem. His external, architectural descriptions of the academy disclose his inner voice that resembles a prisoner who is locked up in a powerful institution: “At an angle of the ponderous wall frowned a more ponderous gate. It was riveted and studded with iron bolts, and surmounted with jagged iron spikes” (5). Moreover, his descriptions of the internal landscape of the academy, hints the start of his mental disorientation: “There was really no end to its windings – to its incomprehensible subdivisions…that our most exact ideas in regard to the whole mansion were not very far different from those with which we pondered upon infinity” (5). If the architectural features of the academy seem sombre, the demeanor ofWilson’s teacher suggests that he isWilson’s ultimate nightmare. Wilson’s teacher administers with a “ferule in hand, the Draconian laws of the academy” (5). He is an omniscient patriarch who does it all: a teacher, administrator, and a pastor. Wilson is never free from his presence, every day in the classrooms, and every Sundays in the church. Clearly, in this institutional setting,Wilson can no longer be “the master of [his] own actions” (4). His life in the academy is antithetic to his former, free, pre-school days. Thus, fromWilson’s narrative, we can surmise that the day of his admission to this academy marks the beginning of his mental disorientation.
As an institution, if the academy represses Wilson’s “free will,” Aylmer’s marriage to Georgiana (a spouse with a birthmark), is an “insult” to his scientific intelligence. Just as Wilson, Aylmer’s pre-social, pre-marital existence also suggests a scientist whose mind is intact from institutional pressures. Upon marriage, the fact that Aylmer“had [to] le[ave] his laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance from the furnace-smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers” (1289), shows that his pre-marital existence was simple and singular in a laboratory, free from matrimonial complexities or intrusions. The narrator confirms that, indeed, before the institutionalization of marriage, Aylmer, as a bachelor and a scientist had enjoyed tranquility: “seated calmly in this laboratory, [he]…had investigated the secrets of the highest cloud-region, and of the profoundest mines” (1292). According to the narrator, Aylmerwas certainly a man of “higher intellect, the imagination, the spirit, and even the heart” (1289). Certainly, the Birth-Mark’s narrative supports thatAylmer’s mind, before the institution of marriage, was acute and sound.
On the day of Aylmer’s marriage to Georgiana, the narrator, who is well aware of Aylmer’s innate dispositions, forebodes the effect of matrimonial institutionalization on this proud scientist. He says that “Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly remarkable consequences” (1290, emphasis added). Before marriage, Aylmer’s foremost passion was “scientific studies” (1289). After his marriage, however, distracted and redirected by matrimonial influence, Aylmer’s former, scientific acuteness perversely intertwines with his second passion, Georgiana. The narrator confirms his forebodings when he says that “very soon after their marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife, with a trouble in his countenance that grew stronger, until he spoke. “Georgiana,” said he “has it never occurred to you that the mark upon your cheek might be removed?” (1289, emphasis added). Aylmer’s own explanation about “the intertwining effect of his first and second passion” shows how marriage as an institution perversely magnifies his innate inclinations. This is Aylmer’s explanations to his first love (science) and his second love (Georgiana): “[my] love for [my] young wife might prove the stronger of the two; but it could only be by intertwining itself with [my] love of science, and uniting the strength of the latter to its own” (1290, emphasis added). The holy matrimony that presumably has the power to domesticate bachelors, ironically, throws Aylmer off-balance from his pre-marital, simple existence. After marriage, as Aylmer is forced to confront his other half (Georgiana), he becomes irritated and consumed by one uncontrollable aspect of this institution: the birth-mark of his wife. His exacting, scientific mind is insulted by this imperfection, and he bemoans that “after his marriage – for he thought little or nothing of the matter before” –… he found this one defect grow more and more intolerable, with every moment of their united lives” (1290, emphasis added). Thus, it isAylmer’s “united lives” (1290) with Georgiana that upset his bachelorly tranquility, and incite his scientific inclinations into perverseness.
If the protagonist’s “integral will” (Coskren, 157), suffers from institutional insults and oppressions, their total mental breakdown, in most part, is due to their own inflexibility and lack of negotiation with the external forces (institutions). Although, duality and even multiplicity is intrinsic in all human beings, because Aylmer and W ilsonlack the willingness/ability to negotiate/accept human complexities, they abysmally fail in institutional settings. Determined to obliterate external intrusions,Wilson and Aylmer, instead of introspection, they circumvent any signs of discomfort from external sources. Escape is their ultimate desires, not reconciliations.
When Wilsonis forced to acknowledge his imaginary double, for instance, instead of negotiating or accepting it, he escapes. For example,Wilson, upon realizing that his one body embraces both fictitious and real Wilson, he runs away:
“I lowered the lamp in still nearer proximity to the face. Were these- these the lineaments of William Wilson? I saw indeed that they were his, but I shook as with a fit of the ague, in fancying they were not…The same name! the same contour of person!…Awestricken…I extinguished the lamp…and left at once the halls of that old academy.” (12)
What horrifies Wilsonin this confrontation is the discovery that the other Wilsonis not some external, corporeal being, but rather his own image. Immediately after this discovery, instead of trying to unify and harmonize his dichotomized egos, he rushes out, leaving the institution.
Likewise, Aylmeralso attempts to escape from reality; he refuses to accept that the birthmark on Georgiana’s cheek is, in fact, his imaginary visions of his own hand. The narrative is replete with allusions that link Georgiana’s birthmark to that of Aylmer’s character flaw. Weinstein, in her essay, The Invisible Hand Made Visible: ‘The Birth-Mark,’ suggests that “Georgiana is one incessant circulatory system” that reacts toAylmer’s emotions (Weinstein, 52). The following passage shows this mystical connection between the birthmark’s changing color and size to that of Aylmer’s emotions: “It needed but a glance [of Aylmer], 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, like a bas-relief of ruby on the whitest marble” (1291). Aylmer confesses to this phenomenon: “It must not be concealed, however, that the impression wrought by this fairy sign-manual varied exceedingly; according to the difference of temperament in the beholders” (1290). Although,Aylmer admits to the mystical link between the visibility of the birthmark to that of his emotions, he is far from introspection, in denial of his own involvements.
Furthermore, just like the relations between the birthmark’s visibility andAylmer’s emotions, the following passage links the hand-shaped birthmark to that ofAylmer’s hand, which portrays his imperfections, namely, his scientific failures:
To Georgiana, the most engrossing volume was a large folio from her husband’s own hand…He handled physical details…In his grasp, the veriest clod of earth assumed a soul…The volume, rich with achievements that had won renown for its author, was yet as melancholy a record as ever mortal hand had penned. (1296, emphasis added)
Aylmer’s foremost passion and pride as an indefectible scientist is actually a façade created on his own to conceal his failures as a man of science. Georgiana, who metaphorically is Aylmer’s internal ego, sees the truth while, he (the external ego), cannot or is not willing to. Georgiana’s birth-mark, the “Crimson hand” (1291), the “spectral hand” (1291), the “odious Hand” (1291), the “Bloody Hand” (1290), and the “fatal Hand” (1299) is yet an emblem of Aylmer’s “own hand” (1296). In fact, Georgiana’s birthmark symbolically discloses Aylmer’s lifetime laboratory career as an utter failure: “to Georgiana (Aylmer’s conscious internal ego), the…large folio…in which he had recorded every experiment of his scientific career…was the sad confession, and continual exemplification of the short-comings of the composite man” (1296, emphasis added). This volume ofAylmer’s, though “renown for its author,” suffers from incurable “melancholy” (1296). This “melancholy” (1296) isAylmer’s mental disease, an ego dichotomy that blinds the other half. Although it is Alymer’s wish to deny the reality, Georgiana’s birthmark stand as an acute reminder of his own imperfections as a scientist. The hand-shaped birthmark, whose visibility is solely dependent uponAylmer’s mood, is his optical illusions, which portrays his own “short-comings” (1296).
Paradoxically, the danger ofWilsonandAylmer’s escapism from reality is that there is no such world, where they can live in a space of pure-self, free from institutional insults and oppressions. Coskren says the paradox of one seeking freedom from external forces is that “the integral will is condemned to the prison of self, bound by the massive walls of the inner mind” (Coskren,161). WhatWilsonandAylmercan’t fathom is that if insults and oppressions don’t come from institutions, they will from other sources, most unexpectedly, from themselves.
Wilson, for instance, instead of trying to negotiate with his dual ego, he “turn[s] all [his] attacks upon him” (9), thus never “uniformly successful…in character” (9). Wilson escapes from introspection. He doesn’t really want the truth; therefore, he can’t hear himself. Wilson has repeatedly asked himself: “again, and again, in secret communion with [his] own spirit, would [he] demand the questions ‘Who is he? – whence came he? –and what are his objects? But no answer was there found” (18). The day Wilson entirely rejects his alter ego, heralds the inevitable war of the two opposing egos. This corporeal battle of the two conflicting egos is the day ofWilson’s self-dissolution. As if he still longs for a universe of pure-self, Wilson, on the day of his duel, steps away from the crowd into an empty chamber, effecting what Coskren characterizes as the “condemnation to the prison of self, bound by the massive walls of the inner mind” (Coskren,161). Thus, being unable/unwilling to negotiate, only aware of his illusory spirit clothed in his body, he ludicrously commits suicide: “the contest was brief indeed…I…plunged my sword,…repeatedly through and through his bosom. His senses, long gone the day he stepped into the academy, at last, realize that he is dying. The mirror image adds a brutal irony to Wilson’s final self-enlightenment: “A large mirror…now stood where none had been perceptible before…as I stepped up to it…mine own image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood, advanced to meet me…in the most absolute identity, mine own!” (21). His dichotomized internal and external egos are now forced to witness their inseparability: “In me didst thou exist – and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself” (21). Because Wilson seeks escape when negotiation and compromise is in call, he, in effect, imprisons and kills himself in “the prison of self” (Coskren, 161).
Just as Wilson wages war against himself, Aylmer wages war against Georgian’s body. Unable to reconcile Georgiana’s birthmark that represents his own moral shortcomings, he believes that with “toil and pain” (1290), he can overcome it. In other words Aylmer, too, like Wilson, is preparing for self-destruction, a corporeal war against Georgiana’s body. Liz Rosenberg, in her essay, ‘The best that earth could offer’: ‘The Birth-mark,’ a newlywed’s story, claims that Aylmer “falls prey soon after his marriage to a haunting awareness of ‘his wife’s…tiny birthmark on her cheek” (Rosenberg, 155). Aylmer, who “has faith in man’s ultimate control over nature” (1289), resists compromise over such a “fatal flaw” (1290). Just as Wilson retreats to a private chamber for his final, corporeal execution, Aylmer, too, retreats to his yonder, “severe and homely…apartment” (1297), with an atmosphere that feels “oppressively close” (1297). He, like Wilson, becomes a victim of escapism from institutional insult, only to imprison himself in “the prison of self” (161, Coskren). As Aylmer feeds the fatal elixir to Georgiana, she dies with half of his ego and all of his happiness. Just asWilson’s acknowledgment of his alter ego comes at a moment of corporeal death, so too, is Aylmer. When Georgiana’s birthmark fades and dissolves,Aylmer finally sees the birthmark for what it is: “Alas, it was too true! The fatal Hand…in union with a [his] mortal frame…hadAylmer reached a profounder wisdom, he need not thus have flung away the happiness” (1300). Georgiana’s death isAylmer’s self-destruction of his own soul, happiness of a marriage, and a scientific career. The narrator comments aboutAylmer’s final moment of self-enlightenment: “The momentary circumstance was too strong for him” (1300). Aylmer, thus due to his inability to negotiate life’s complexities, metaphysically experiences self-dissolution, his ego half gone, arid of Georgiana’s nurturing spirit.
Either illusory or palpable, both Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Birth-Mark and Edgar Allan Poe’s William Willson cast “human body” as a battleground for the war of opposing egos. The corporeal façades, the alter egos of both Wilson and Aylmer, are, in fact, reflections of their own, acute reminders of their own character flaws. If “self will” is what Wilson is obsessed with, “scientific invincibility” isAylmer’s. Unable to expand from their pure-self existence, nor able to negotiate complexities abound in an institutional settings, both protagonists fall prey to self-destructions. Allegorically,Wilson andAylmer’s self-dissolutions warn the readers that there is no pure-self universe. The only world for humans is the world of various institutions. True, that some institutions can be harmful, yet negotiation and reconciliation is the key, not escapism.
Works Cited
Coskren, Robert. “’William Wilson’ And The Disintegration of Self.” Studies in Short Fiction. 12.2 (1975): 155-162.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “The Birth-Mark.” The Norton Anthology of Amerian literature. 6 B. Franklin,Wayne, et al., eds.New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003. 1289-1300.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “William Wilson.” Electronic Text Center, university of Virginia Library. 3-21.
Rosenberg, Liz. “’The best that earth could offer’: ‘The Birth-mark,’ a newlywed’s story.” Studies in Short Fiction. 30.2 (1993): 145-7.
Weinstein, Cindy. “The Invisible Hand Made Visible: ‘The Birth-Mark.’” Nineteenth-Century Literature. 48.1 (1993): 44-73.
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