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At a point in the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Harding says that the men on the ward as well as all the men in the world are victims of a matriarchy. Seeing how the main reference made to women in the novel involves the Big Nurse, Nurse Ratched, who is represented as a controlling and manipulative woman, one could say that Harding s statement could be justified. Through Nurse Ratched and her role in the book, all women are represented as controlling and manipulative people. The Big Nurse depicts Ken Kesey s view of women as opportunists. Miss Ratched takes advantage of her position to get power; she puts her morals and her ethics (considering she has morals and ethics) on the line by abusing the men that are depending on her to get a higher and more powerful position. While reading the novel, it is possible to say that Kesey views all women that way.
The reason the author sets the novel in a mental hospital, in an all male ward is because traditionally, a woman cannot obtain the kind of power the Big Nurse has in a society mostly controlled by men. Because she is a nurse in a mental hospital, the men there are unstable, vulnerable and weak, so she revels in her power over the men, especially when she succeeds in making them feel less manly. To acquire more power over the men, Nurse Ratched constantly attempts to embarrass or belittle the men under her control by referring to their sexuality and making them feel inferior. A clear example of this in the novel is during one of the group therapy sessions when Harding says that people stare at his wife who is very pretty everywhere they go, the Big Nurse tells him that he gives his wife reason to look elsewhere, thus taking a stab at Harding s sexuality and leaving him feeling as little as a man as possible. If Nurse Ratched succeeded in nullifying completely the sexes of the men on the ward and of herself as well, she would succeed in obtaining total control over the patients and Dr. Spivey.
Ken Kesey infers that if women get the opportunity, they will immediately imitate and replicate what were thought to be the actions solely of man during the past several centuries. To a stated extent, Ken Kesey reverses the traditional roles of man and woman in his novel. Although Nurse Ratched is the main female character in the novel, she is not the only one that takes advantage of her position to gain power. Similar statements could be said of Billy Babbitt s mother and Mrs. Harding, who take advantage of the instability of, respectively, their son and husband.
What Ken Kesey is trying to say about women such as these and especially such as the Big Nurse, is that women like these would not be able to obtain a lot of power had they not been associated with weak and unstable men. The Big Nurse would not have had that kind of power in the real world. What is implied here is that women are constantly trying to find their places in society and will go to extreme measures to obtain a powerful one. There are three women in the book that exploit their femininity (or at least Kesey s version of it) and are therefore considered nice: Candy, Sandy and Miss Pillow otherwise referred to as the Birthmark Nurse. Since Miss Ratched does not exploit her femininity, but on the contrary resorts to radical proportions in order to hide it, she has to be ashamed of her femininity. Candy is the main nice woman in the novel.
She appears so, because she never speaks out against the man and will do anything for the man. Kesey holds such a strong position and has such a strong opinion on certain subjects, that he appears unreasonable at times. He shows the woman who holds a good job, maintains a strong personality and jurisdiction and who sacrificed herself for her country during the war as an abhorrent monster and he shows the whore as a lovely, kind and effeminate person. This, in itself, is very untraditional and rebellious.
In conclusion, it is important to say that Ken Kesey, a leader of the love movement during the 1960 s and even influencing this movement, which fought for equality and freedom, might come off looking as a sexist writing against women holding high positions and having good jobs, but what he s really trying to say is that women would not have to go to extreme measures to obtain a powerful position like Nurse Ratched does if they had the opportunity to obtain power by simply working for it as men do. In reality, this novel, actually, takes a feminist stand and helps in the fight for sexual equality.
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Research essay sample on Nurse Ratched Ken Kesey
