Knowing that the novel was written 200 years after the fictionalized setting, what inference can you make about the societal values of the Puritan age and Hawthorne’s time? Hester is an admirable protagonist in Hawthorne’s time but is considered a sinner in her own time. Hawthorne’s interpretation of Hester’s sin is the same as Puritan values in the 1600s. Societal values regarding sin did not change much between the Puritan age and Hawthorne’s time.