The granddaughter of Sir Francis Tyler, sixteen-year-old Katherine (Kit) Tyler is the novel's protagonist. Her encounter with Hannah Tupper, the title character, helps Kit to understand her own outcast position in this Puritan society, where she is torn between rebellion and conformity. Through her meetings with Hannah, Kit becomes more understanding, partly because Hannah functions as a surrogate mother. As a Quaker, Hannah is an outcast in the Wethersfield community. She appears different from others because she lives in the meadows near Blackbird Pond and practices a religion the others do not understand . Unlike the rigid Puritans of the town, she is genuinely kind and demonstrates a capacity for love, but the townspeople consider her a witch because she keeps cats. In the past, Hannah was branded on the forehead when she and her now-deceased husband were banished from Massachusetts and forced to seek religious freedom...