When she drinks Aylmer’s elixir, Georgiana compares her senses to leaves and her spirit to a rose:
My earthly senses are closing over my spirit like the leaves around the heart of a rose at sunset.
This striking simile says a lot about her character. The rose is a recurring theme in literature, famously used by Shakespeare ("a rose by any other name would smell as sweet") and Robert Burns in his poem "A Red, Red Rose." The rose often represents love or beauty. In Hawthorne's story, Georgiana's simile evokes not only her delicate beauty but also her love for her husband. Natural imagery clashes sharply with Aylmer's supernatural aspirations, and Georgiana's word choice makes her death seem like a natural (or inevitable) process for which she refuses to blame Aylmer. She does not compare her senses to, say, smoke covering a cauldron of chemicals; she draws inspiration from nature itself. Whether it is a conscious attempt to divest her husband of responsibility, or an expression of unconscious attraction to the earthly realm, this particular simile takes a darker turn than its literary predecessors. It also reveals Georgiana's awareness of the interaction between her own body and spirit. Georgiana understands the dichotomy between the physical and spiritual worlds and here confirms that they remain at odds in Aylmer's workspace.
Readers might also compare Georgiana to the flower that Aylmer grows in his laboratory. Seemingly out of nowhere, its stalk shoots upward from a pot of soil and sprouts a lovely flower. Georgiana expresses her amazement and her reluctance to pick the flower. However, when Aylmer urges her to do so, it withers instantly. The flower's ephemeral beauty resembles that of Georgiana; once Aylmer has made her absolutely perfect by eliminating the birthmark, she has only enough breath to tell him she is dying.
