“Young Goodman Brown” and womenWhat are the attitudes of the young puritan husband Goodman Brown towards women, of the author towards women, of the other characters in the story towards women? This essay aims to answer this question. Randall Stewart in “Hawthorne's Female Characters” states that there are three types of female characters in Hawthorne's writings: (1) “the wholesome New England girl, bright, sensitive, and self-sufficient;” (2) "the fragile, sylph-like creature, easily influenced by a stronger personality;" and (3) “the woman with an exotic richness in her nature” (98), and that “Young Goodman Brown” has in Faith “cheerfulness, beauty, and a domestic simplicity” (99). So this classifies it under type (1). In the village of Salem that fateful night when the young Puritan husband was leaving for the night, he exchanged "a farewell kiss with his young wife." From this we can conclude that he had fundamental respect for her feelings (?). The wind played with “the pink ribbons of his cap.” Literary critic Wagenknecht examines some of the critical interpretations relating to these ribbons: Mathews finds the crayon of childhood in pink, but since pink is an intermediate color between red and white, William V. Davis prefers to interpret it as indicative of “nor total depravity nor innocence” but “the tainted innocence, the spiritual imperfection of humanity,” a view shared, to a certain extent, by Robinson. . . . (62).So critics would have us believe that the author is making a statement here: that seemingly good Faith is not all that good, based on the author's placement of the pink ribbons on the cap. She whispered, “Dearest heart, please postpone your journey until dawn and sleep… middle of paper… partly. BIBLIOGRAPHY Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Complete Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc.,1959. Lang, H.J. “How devious is Hawthorne?” In Hawthorne – A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by AN Kaul. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966.Leavis, Q.D. “Hawthorne as Poet.” In Hawthorne – A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by AN Kaul. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. Martin, Terence “Six Stories.” In Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York: Twayne Publishers Inc., 1965. Stewart, Randall. "Hawthorne's Female Characters." In Readings on Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Clarice Swisher. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1996. Wagenknecht, Edward. Nathaniel Hawthorne - The man, his stories and his love stories. New York: Continuum Publishing Co., 1989.