“Home Without a Home: Scientific Industrialization and the Corruption of Domesticity in Hawthorne’s “The Birth-mark”

Abstract

This thesis examines Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birth-mark” as a critique of nineteenth century industrial scientific modernity by arguing that the story portrays the collapse of the Romantic home through the desecration of the interior space in what this project calls an anti-home. Rather than treating the story as an allegory of patriarchal control, this study reframes the narrative as a spatial inversion in which the home becomes destabilized thus losing its capacity to provide moral order and psychological belonging. Using Romantic traditions paired with nineteenth century domestic ideology, this study situates the hearth-centered home as a refuge of intimacy and ethical stability from industrial encroachment. However, Hawthorne systematically inverts these traditional associations by allowing scientific logic to reorganize domestic interiors by replacing organic light, nature, and marital intimacy with artificial illumination, scientific apparatuses, and stealth monitoring. Once Aylmer’s apartment is transformed into a laboratory, the home is unable to mediate the pressures of modern life; instead they are reproduced within the household. Through close readings of architectural space, floral imagery, and curtains, this thesis demonstrates how “The Birth-mark” portrays the domestic space as psychologically corrosive. Georgiana’s increasing alienation during the marriage signals homelessness not as a physical condition but as a psychological state produced by the erosion of domestic meaning. By focusing on architecture and material culture, this thesis positions “The Birth-mark” as a critique of how scientific progress causes the collapse of the Romantic home and psychological homelessness.