By: Nathaniel Hawthorne

 Alymer is immediately portrayed as a man of science…why is this distinction so important?  What does the text say about his wife Georgiana?  The “Bloody Hand” destroys the “effect of Georgiana’s beauty” (646). Is Alymer the only one that feels this way?  Georgiana learned to “shudder at his gaze” (647); what has Alymer allowed this to do to his marriage?

 “It is in her heart now – we must have it out!” (647). What has Alymer decided?  Aminidab-the trusted servant that does whatever he is asked.  Why does Georgiana consent to this madness?  “Is this beyond your power, for the sake of your own peace, and to save your poor wife from madness?” (648).

 Alymer makes a totally separate suite of rooms for this experiment…he also doesn’t let Georgiana leave.  “If she were my wife, I’d never part with that birth-mark” (649); what is Aminidab saying here?  Elixir of Immortality…the “most precious poison that ever was concocted” (651); what does this foreshadow?

 How does Georgiana feel as she examines the book that was “both the history and the emblem of his ardent, ambitious, imaginative, yet practical and laborious life” (652); what does this tell us about Alymer?  What does Georgiana discover as she enters the lab?  What is Georgiana willing to do if it means giving Alymer comfort?

 Alymer finally makes the birth-mark disappear…unfortunately, it results in Georgiana’s death.  What happened? What went wrong?  What is the intended purpose of this story?