Ken Kesey Sexism

In 1950s society, a traditional gender-enforced period, women were seen as and only as the housemaids. Weak and docile under the male’s gaze, women accepted the roles as submissive wives without many of them having accomplished well-paid jobs. The 1960s was a pinnacle time with the second wave of the feminist movement, after 1920s suffrage, were women felt more empowered and open with their opinions. While the movement inspired works like the 1962, Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique, were she explains the trials of sexism and the frustration of identity, but it also caused uproar with the American authors who disapproved movement and shifting power roles. Ken Kesey was one of these authors. Kesey fought every unfair societal issue from

freedom of sexuality to problems with the “system”, but never once opted in favor for the new budding of feminism. In fact, Ken Kesey’s 1962 book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, he fights and demonizes the idea of strong women and rewards only the sexual gratification of their bodies.

From the first characterization of the Big Nurse inside the mind of the main character it is clear that Kesey does not hold strong career-holding women on a high pedestal.

“She slides through the door with a gust of cold and locks the door behind her and I see her fingers trail across the polished steel—tip of each finger the same color as her lips. Funny orange. Like the tip of a soldering iron. Color so hot or so cold if she touches you with it you can’t tell which.” Kesey sees her as cold, awkward-looking woman; he demonizes her to be a fearsome being because of her high status. When Chief is describing her bag her carries at work he explains, “there’s no compact or lipstick or woman stuff, she’s got that bag full of thousand parts she aims to use in her duties today—wheels and gears, cogs polished to a hard glitter, tiny pills that gleam like porcelain, needles, forceps, watchmakers’ pliers, rolls of copper wire …”, further the idea women are meant to be pretty and/or beautiful every they go even in the long hours of work. One could even assume the list of medical tools could be in a negative tone and the “woman stuff” in a positive one despite the former actually being for a working purpose. What is also an alarming characterization about the Big Nurse the “size of her bosom.” Chief describes them as “a mistake was made somehow in manufacturing, putting those big, womanly breasts on what would of otherwise been a perfect work, and you can see how bitter she is about

it.” The Big Nurse knew the power she held was something she could only have if she wasn’t sexualized. She hates her body for being womanly and natural because it reminded her of the lower status she would always have with men. The other wives of the inmates, more powerful women, are seen negatively in the light in the book. Harding’s wife is one of these examples. Vera Harding is a sly woman who know what she wants in a man with comebacks like “Oh Dale, you never do have enough, do you?” when her husband is talking about cigarettes. And because she was above her husband and seen as the dominant partner Kesey made her a cheating loose woman because that all a dominant woman could be.

With powerful women being demonized, the interesting part about Kesey’s thinking is that they still hold an important role as sexual gratifiers to men. The prostitutes in the book were seen in a better light than the Big Nurse or the wives. Kesey, almost the way he wrote them, wanted us to like them and cheer for them rather than the “ball cutters”. He seems to have to idea that fun can only happen if you are drunk and/or having sex. “As I walked after them it came to me as a kind of sudden surprise that I was drunk, actually drunk, glowing and grinning and staggering drunk for the first time since the Army, drunk along with half a dozen other guys and a couple of girls—right on the Big Nurse’s ward! Drunk and running and laughing and carrying on with women square in the center of the Combine’s most powerful stronghold!” The main character only was happy and laughing and reminiscing when it was with alcohol and women. “I felt so good thinking about this that I gave a yell and swooped down on McMurphy and the girl Sandy walking along in front of me, grabbed them both up, one in each arm, and ran all the way to the day room with them hollering and kicking like kids. I felt that good.” The repetition in the main character’s feeling at the time shows that women and alcohol were it and something useful in feeling better.

Now, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a good book that does challenge many ideals that are still fought about today and I’m not going to define to act of the Big Nurse, but the overwhelming indifference to the power of women is still unfairly put. The idea of a woman being less strong or less significant in things other than sex is mind-boggling to a woman in this day in age.