The Role Of Women In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

From the mid-twentieth century, the role of females and other minority groups in society have drastically changed following the feminism movement and World War II. In Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the author emphasizes the roles of females by presenting characters that exhibit behaviors contrasting the expected ones given by society. He assigns perceived nurturing and caring characters, such as a nurse, wife, and mother, dominating and abrasive roles that contradict typical roles at that time. Stereotypically, nurses, wives, and mothers are expected to submit to male influence in society along with honoring their dominance. Kesey chooses to have his characters reject these gender roles by giving them power over various

Kesey develops characters of these minorities to depict how they should be assimilated and more accepted into society. Because minorities’ roles have drastically changed in the 1950s, Ken Kesey deviates his female characters from their typical gender roles by allowing women to emasculate men and having other minority groups empower them. The main female presence throughout One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Nurse Ratched, expresses her dominance over male patients, thereby deviating from the expected role of nurses in society. Most often, the nurse’s strict rules and punishments emasculate the men rather than empower them. Generally, nurses are perceived to be caring and compassionate towards their patients and compliant to doctors or higher ranked co-workers. Nurse Ratched clearly defies the stereotypical roles of a nurse by completely emasculating men. Because the nurse was a former military nurse, her ward runs similar to those run in the military: “Army nurses, trying to run an Army hospital” (Kesey 240). She implemented rigid rules and policies that can be seen as both necessary yet unjust. Within these policies are strict punishments she often imposes on the male patients unwilling to