In the seventeenth century, the Puritans grew discontent in the Church of England, for which their own ideals opposed those of the church. The Puritans created a rigid structure that possessed patriarchal principles and suppressed the majority of the society’s individualism. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hester, similar to the Puritans with England, refuses to comply with society’s religious ruling. Through the use of metaphorical imagery and juxtaposition Hawthorne magnifies the Puritans’ religious hypocrisy and patriarchal standards that gradually victimize Hester. With personification and metaphor, Hawthorne delineates the inescapable confinement and constant torment that Hester suffers from society. As he personifies
