"Elsewhere, Hawthorne was likely to tailor the piece to his audience. For
the largely feminine readership of Godey's Lady's Book, he offered one of
his easy and agreeable fables, "Drowne's Wooden Image," an American version
of the Pygmalion myth. It is also one of his more pedestrian parables of the
artist, a story of a mysterious and beautiful woman who inspires an otherwise
ineffectual artist to create his one masterpiece" (233). (From Nathaniel
Hawthorne in His Times, by James R. Mellow. Copyright (c) 1980 by James
R. Mellow. Reprinted by permission of Georges Borchardt, Inc, for the Estate
of James R. Mellow.)
