However, it could be a demonstration of man's ignorance by trying to perfect an already nearly perfect creature, his wife.
Hawthorne's short stories also portray how women are under men's control. "Georgiana is a victim of a man, the protagonist, to whom they are bound by ties of love" (Fitzgerald, 194). So she can't really tell him no because she is under his control. "On one level the story is a study of sexual politics, of the powerlessness of women and of the psychology which results from the powerlessness" (Fetterley, 170). However, it could illustrate that women control man and Aylmer is trying to gain control over Georgiana. "Hawthorne shows how men gain power over women, the power to create and kill, to "mar", "mend", and "make", without ever having their image as nice guys" (Fetterley, 171). So are men in control of women or is it the other way around?.
Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown", could be an illustration of men's faith in women. Goodman Brown's wife's name is Faith. She serves an allegorical purpose in the story. "She represents the force of good in the world" (Gale Research, 3). Goodman Brown leaves his wife suggesting that all Faith is gone. "My love and my Faith," replied Young Goodman Brown, "of all nights in the year, this one night I must tarry away from thee" (Hawthorne, 55). "He realizes that Faith is going to the meeting, and he decides to attend the meeting too because all good is now gone" (Gale Research, 3). Faith's pink ribbons are also mentioned throughout the entire story. "On one hand they have been said to represent female sexuality, while on the other innocence. Or, they merely signify the ornament of a sweet and cheerful wife" (Gale Research, 4). She represents how if men those their wives or women in general, they are lost and lose all hope.
Men in Hawthorne's short stories seem to be illustrating jealousy of the beauty of women. ".Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from the hand of Nature that that slightest possible defect, which we hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly imperfection" (Hawthorne, 45).
