The Birthmark and The Crucible

The Birthmark begins with an exceptionally intellegent scientist named Aylmer who has recently married a woman named Georgiana. Georgiana has a red birthmark shaped like a hand on her cheek, and soon Aylmer becomes strangely entranced by the mark. When his wife faints, he assumes it is because of her evil birthmark. In The Crucible, the fainting girls were said to be possessed in a similar manner. He becomes completely obsessed, just as the people of Salem became obsessed with the persecution of the witches, and decides that it should be removed. The birthmark isn't a mundane trait, similar to the dancing in the woods, so Aylmer considered it wicked; he could no longer accept its obscurity, and he forces his wife to drink a potion that he says will remove her birthmark from the inside out, since it's "deep in her body". Aylmer ends up killing his wife over a fallacy he has created, just as the Salem "witches" were hanged for doing "witchcraft".