What concept does each of the characters in "The Birthmark" stand for?

Nathaniel Hawthorne's story "The Birthmark" uses allegory, a literary device where the characters represent specific elements of a story's social or political message. To figure out what each character signifies, we first need to look at the main theme of this story: man's desire to conquer and tame nature. Alymer is obsessed with science and using his intellect to, in Hawthorne's words, "lay his hand on the secret of creative force and perhaps make new worlds for himself." In other words, he wants to bring order to the chaos found in the natural world. The situation gets dangerous, though, when he transfers his obsession with natural perfection to his wife, Georgiana, and the hand-shaped birthmark on her face. In using his scientific abilities to eliminate the birthmark, he achieves his goal, but Georgiana dies in the process. In short, the story shows the dangers that arise when people try to alter the natural imperfections of the world.
Now that we've established the theme, let's look at each of the three characters in the story and see how they illustrate this idea:
Alymer: As both a protagonist and antagonist in the story, Alymer represents the intellectual and spiritual nature of humans. Hawthorne directly states this in the second half of the story: "Aylmer's slender figure, and pale, intellectual face, were no less apt a type of the spiritual element." Alymer's quest to create perfection through science and his overall belief that the natural world can be made better fit both of these characteristics.
Georgiana: Georgiana represents the finite, imperfect nature of humanity. This can be seen chiefly through Hawthorne's description of the birthmark itself: "It was the fatal flaw of humanity which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain." We are also told that Alymer sees the birthmark as "the symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death." Thus, Alymer's quest for perfection and enlightenment via science is directly at odds with the fact that his wife, despite her beauty, is fallible to human error and mortality.
Aminidab: Alymer's quirky assistant is set up as a direct foil to Alymer's intellectualism by representing the physical, earthly nature of people. Hawthorne describes Aminidab as almost caveman-like: "With his vast strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the indescribable earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent man's physical nature." Beyond this description, it is also important to look at his reaction to Georgiana's death. His response of laughter suggests that he is mocking Alymer's efforts to overcome the reality of the physical world that imperfection cannot be tamed.
As a result, the allegorical representations of each character perfectly fit within the overall thematic scope of the story. Try reading through the story again with these ideas in mind and looking for quotes of your own that illustrate each of these three concepts.