March's appearance in the last 50 pages of the book is electrifying. Nancy, defenseless and trusting, quails before her. So anxious is she to please the woman she views as her own personal savior, she is excruciatingly slow to understand that March, voracious and cruel, is taking over her life, claiming her home and her husband, and plotting to send the children away. Seymour gives us not merely a retelling of a historic event but an intricate microcosm of tyranny. Nancy embodies the tyranny of parents over children, having both suffered abuse at the hands of her father, and made her own children suffer the consequences of her extreme behavior.
Chance is emblematic of how the selfish tyrannize the generous.
He is supported first by his wife, and then by his friends, only to abruptly align himself with March, the epitome of egoism. And March exemplifies the tyranny of false messiahs over true believers. Not only does she callously betray the faith of her follower, she banishes her from her own home, declares her unfit, and has her incarcerated. Seymour reveals this essential truth by setting Nancy's tragedy against a backdrop of the Salem witch trials, which took place not far from Point House. They form a dire, emotional tangle that runs in her blood, and was bred in her bones.