Whereas, in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, Atwood poignantly explores the presentation of the effects of the weaponization of knowledge within advanced power dynamics – in order to erasure female value – through the physical weaponization of the female form. In doing so, perhaps Atwood, like Shelley, serves to accentuate the prevalence of the power wielded by knowledge abuse as a result of its manipulation, illustrating the ways in which its abuse can facilitate the collective degradation of female value and validity. As such, Atwood examines this relationship through her construction of the weaponization of religious ideology, as to satiate masculine desire; in particular, that the Handmaids are always “Under His Eye” when walking “two by two” to complete their mandated domesticity is significant, with this suggestion of perpetual surveillance in conjunction with the formulaic phrases of “Blessed be the fruit” and “May the Lord open” perhaps underlining the perpetuity and ubiquity inherent within the weaponization of the female form, the yonic imagery of the “fruit” in conjunction with the biblical choes of being wished upon to be “blessed” physically manifesting this need for the Handmaids to be reduced to their reproductive ability, the adjective “blessed” alternatively attributing them a revered purity and benevolence in favour of satiating phallocentric desire. In immediately emphasising the ubiquity of the manipulation of knowledge within the exposition of Offred’s homodiegetic narrative, Atwood interestingly solidified their roles as only being “two-legged wombs”, “sacred vessels”, and “ambulatory chalices”, the collective reification of the Handmaids as being “worthy vessel[s]” juxtaposing its proxemics, as to emphasise, perhaps, the phallocentric perception of women as being physically empty appearing to confirm their positions within Gilead as ones possessing conditional authenticity and agency in response to masculine urges and desire.
Alternatively, perhaps it is plausible to suggest that Atwood’s dehumanised construction of the Handmaids as “sacred vessels” – ones who are not “concubines, geisha girls, courtesans – is polysemic in its biblical reference to the story of Rachel, Leah, and Jacob within Genesis, with Bilhah and Zilpah’s reductive physical exploitation to carry Jacob’s reflecting the emptiness that tinges the perception of the Handmaids when unable to fulfil their roles as “two-legged realms” in a totalitarian theocracy, in which “God is a national resource”. What is more, in constructing the dehumanisation of the Handmaids through their attributed physical emptiness as “vehicles” for the phallocentric desires of men, Atwood similarly links the unity of the Handmaids in being in this position of “reduced circumstances” to the localised weaponization of the natural world within Frankenstein, with the weaponization of knowledge to become the “creator” of a ”new species who will bless me as its creator and source” both ultimately erasing the authenticity of female experiences through its lack of ability – or lack of fulfilling – to satiate masculine desire. In doing so, perhaps Atwood serves to emphasise the ways in which the weaponization of knowledge through the veil of phallocentrism merely facilitates the degradation of female validity, as to maintain masculine control within such nuanced and imbalanced power dynamics.