What do the teeth and/or the birthmark represent?

After reading “Berenice” and “The Birthmark” and watching the Unit 1 video lecture, I think we could all use help figuring out what the teeth in Poe’s “Berenice” and what the birthmark in Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark” mean.
What do they represent? Hawthorne almost teases us by calling Georgiana’s birthmark “that mysterious symbol” (18), but what does it symbolize? Poe’s strange narrator Egaeus comes to believe that “all her teeth were ideas” (6) in his monomania, but what does that mean? Do they stand for a specific idea, or just “thought/speculation/intellect” in general? Or multiple ideas? What do the teeth and/or the birthmark symbolize? And how do they help the stories suggest larger philosophical meanings?
And, a possible further issue to consider, does discussing various ideas of what the Teeth/Birthmark represent help us understand why the male characters become so obsessed with the women in such unhealthy ways, and so help us better understand what the story/stories are telling us about gender?
There are many possible ways to think about this, so I’m looking forward to hearing your ideas. Be sure, however, you carefully review thePowerPoint presentation “What makes a good forum post and reply” (available on the “student resources” page), and remember to hit the minimum word counts Provide here. Part 2: The “form,” or organization of a post, and the main elements that should be in each one.
1) Begin with a specific and original argument about the text, much like a thesis statement in an essay. The first words of your post should literally be “I argue…”
2) Include evidence: very precise references, carefully chosen and short quotations, and analyses of the text (especially the quotations and references you chose).
3) End with a quick assertion about why your ideas matter: how does your argument change the way we think about the text, or some aspect of it?
(A fourth, less important part would be to include potential counter-arguments, or elements of the text that might go against your main ideas, and handle them responsibly).
Here’s audio about “form” and “content”

You may choose to discuss both stories or only one; I think the ideal Post would closely analyze onlyone of the stories, but end with some concluding thoughts that touch on both stories together–though you don’t have to try and make them mean the same thing (they surely don’t mean the exact same thing).
You have to Post before you can read other students’ Posts, but then be sure you do read them, since all our ideas together will help us learn about these two stories and help us practice literary criticism–and, of course, so you can make a meaningful Formal Replythat contributes to the discussion–these also need to do some original work with the language of the literature.

Link to video to watch https://youtu.be/QcCXi1J4LxA
Please remember that the titles of Poems and Short Stories go in quotation marks. Later in the semester we will read full length works, and the titles of Novels and Plays go in Italics. So, remember, “Short Stories” vs. Full Novels. For this week, the titles “Berenice” and “The Birthmark” go in quotations, and that is especially important because a claim about “Berenice” refers to the text itself while a claim about Berenice (without quotation marks) refers to the character herself. (And her name, which rhymes with “icy” is not “Bernice”).
Be sure you cite each quotation (just put a page number in parentheses). For the Poe story, cite by the PDF page #.
Forum Posts = at least 500 words, and Replies= at least 200 words. For context, this unit summary is itself well over 500 words.