Discrimination In The Handmaid's Tale

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood are two significant pieces of literature that, when read together, have many identifiable similarities. One similarity between the two novels is the motif of the suppression of power among women. Throughout Pride and Prejudice and The Handmaid’s Tale, the men within these novels suppress the power of women through the abolition of a woman's ability to possess anything physical or to move upward in class.
Possessing anything gives one power someone, directly or indirectly, and the people within Pride and Prejudice along with those in The Handmaid’s Tale all realize this truth. Therefore, the males within both of these societies oppress women by taking their possessions and handing it off to a male. Within Pride and Prejudice, Austen uses history’s utilization of entailment to convey this within her novel. Mrs. Bennet expresses the unfairness of this entailment by saying, “‘I do think it is the hardest thing in the world that your estate should be entailed away from your own children; and I am sure if I had been you, I should have tried long ago to do something or other about it.’” (Austen 46). This entailment will end up to the next
Once the equality crumbles within Atwood’s society, all the power and items are immediately taken away from the women. Moira describes the new situation to Offred by explaining, “Luke can use your Compucount for you, she said. They’ll transfer your number to him, or that’s what they say. Husband or male next of kin.” (Atwood 178-179). Much like the women in Pride and Prejudice, the women in The Handmaid’s Tale are revoked of the privilege to have their own property. Now with no property, the women are left under the rule of men and ultimately powerless and suffering the oppression of male