Tragically, Aylmer removes the birthmark but unintentionally kills Georgiana in the process. Writes Hawthorne, "the fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of life, and was the bond by which an ...

Nathaniel Hawthorne died in 1864, in the midst of the Civil War, a social revolution which he profoundly distrusted; he was traveling in New Hampshire for his health with his old college friend ...