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Self-Consciousness In The Handmaid's Tale

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The emerging self-consciousness and the subsequent inability to assert each protagonist’s selfhood is an equivocal issue in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (TSL) and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (THT). While each protagonist, achieves a level of self-consciousness, it is within the constraints of each of their respective societies, as a result, Hester Prynne (TSL) and Offred (THT) ultimately do not achieve a fully integrated, coherent self.

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