Corporeal Crisis and the Contested Female Terrain: An Ecofeminist Reading of ‘The Birth-Mark’

This paper originally and substantially studies Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘The Birth-Mark’ from an ecofemninsit perspective, while exploring the interconnections and interdependency between the systematic and institutional ways in which woman and nature were dominated by male-centred society in 19th century America. By building on significant contributions to ecofeminist theory, this paper argues that the oppression of women and exploitation of nature by patriarchal culture and male-run institutions are represented in ‘The Birth-Mark’ as a product of masculinist, colonialist and capitalist assumptions and practices. This paper demonstrates that patriarchal culture’s unjust hierarchies and systems of domination are connected conceptually, and the promise of Aylmer to relieve Georgina from the corporeal crisis is an instance of difference-and-hierarchy-based domination; it aims at perpetuating the accepted authority and power of man who can contest God’s female terrain, and to claim his ability to recreate and reintegrate it in ways that show absolute control over nature and God.