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Jasmine Kemble
Ms. Ruttum
Honors Sophomore English
May 9, 2010
Created Equal
Stimulated by the spirit of the 1960’s counterculture and other Civil Rights’
protests, the feminist movement developed into a growing impetus that challenged
conformity and demanded equality. Feminists fought to maintain power and social
control in order to prevent society from controlling them. Throughout his novel One Flew
Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey uses women in power allegorically to demonstrate
how social control strips the common man of his masculinity and individual liberty.
Predominantly, two unflattering and extreme types of women play important roles
within Kesey’s story: the powerful “ball-cutting” (Kesey 57) oppressor, and the weak,
submissive prostitute. Kesey uses the asexual, “ball-cutting” oppressor as an allegory for
communism and the oppressive force of social control while he associates the prostitute
with men’s sexual freedoms. In his book, Kesey uses Nurse Ratched to exercise
dominance over the hospital ward of an insane asylum where she “fixes” men and molds
them to fit within society. As Andrew Foley, author of the article Allegories of freedom:
Individual liberty and social conformity in Ken Kesey’s one flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
notices: “her very name suggests an instrument of control, a ‘ratchet’ which the Concise
Oxford English Dictionary defines as ‘a set of teeth on the edge of a bar or wheel in
which a device engages to ensure motion in one direction only’” (Concise Oxford
English Dictionary quoted by Foley 36). Chief Bromden, a patient of the ward and the
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narrator of the story, describes her as a “high-ranking official” (178) of something he
calls the “Combine,” a paranoid metaphor for society’s machine designed to weed out
undesirables such as himself. Kesey suggests that Nurse Ratched feels the need to control
others in order to gain power, reflecting the mood of the 1960’s feminist movement.
Kesey’s insane asylum serves as the perfect setting for the Big Nurse to exert her control
where each man has a flaw and most importantly an insecurity, rendering him vulnerable
to her rule. Foley mentions in his article, “the nurse’s emphasis on ‘the rules’ is in reality
a further attempt to impose ‘her rule’ on the men” (Foley 38). The patients of the ward
fear her, feeding her domination. Upon arriving in the hospital ward, McMurphy, the
protagonist and main opponent to Nurse Ratched, discovers that the source of the Big
Nurse’s control is the men’s fear of not being accepted in society. She uses her
therapeutic group sessions, or “pecking parties,” (55) as McMurphy puts it, to widen their
insecurities so that they destroy themselves. He relates the way chickens behave in a
group to these sessions:
“ ‘The flock gets sight of a spot of blood on some chicken and they all go
to peckin’ at it, see, till they rip the chicken to shreds, blood and bones and
feathers. But usually a couple of the flock gets spotted in fracas, then it’s their
turn. And a few more gets spots and gets pecked to death, and more and more. Oh
a peckin’ party can wipe out the whole flock in a matter of a few hours, buddy, I
seen it.’ ” (55)
The chickens in McMurphy’s metaphor represent the patients of the Nurse’s group
session, in which they all sit in a circle, and she provokes accusations and confessions
such as “I robbed a cash register in a service station” (49) and “I tried to take my little
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sister to bed” (Kesey 49). The Nurse gains power through the paranoia and insecurities of
disturbed patients. According to psychiatrist and media critic, Dr. Frank Pittman, “What
Kesey’s book is about…is the fear that this prime evil, wild un-socialized antifamily form
of masculinity is going to be stamped out by the force of asexual women and institutions
and society who want men to become grownups” (Pittman quoted by Discovery
Education). Her use of fear reminds the reader of related topics such as the Red Scare of
communism and Hitler’s holocaust, demonstrating that Kesey’s Big Nurse represents
more than a controlling hospital nurse. McMurphy, bold as ever tells her, “‘Those
Chinese Commies could have learned a few things,’ ” (267) connecting the Nurse with
communism. Likewise, Kesey connects McMurphy’s and the patients’ protests to
democracy, revealing that the Nurse and McMurphy collectively serve as an allegory for
America’s fight against communism. When talking to Harding after a “pecking party”,
McMurphy later finds that fear isn’t her only tactic to establishing social control,
however. McMurphy says, “ ‘She ain’t peckin’ at your eyes. That’s not what she’s
peckin’ at…At your balls, buddy, at your everlovin’ balls” (57), suggesting that the Big
Nurse holds authority by “getting’ [them] where it hurts the most” (54) and by taking
away their masculinity. The men in the ward often refer to Nurse Ratched as an asexual
“ball-cutter” (57), more machinelike than human. The one aspect of her that makes her
feminine, however, lies in her abnormally large bosom, transforming her into “Mother
Ratched” (57) and “an Angel of Mercy” (57). Kesey uses this aspect as her weakness,
which McMurphy exploits in the end, ripping open her uniform exposing her true self. In
the end, he revealed her quest to fix others as hypocritical in light of her imperfection.
Her power resides solely in how the patients view themselves: as less than men and not
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worthy to live outside the hospital. McMurphy realizes this and acts to build confidence
in the men, cracking jokes to make them laugh, dragging in prostitutes to revive their
manhood, and even taking them outside the hospital to face the world and potential
criticism. Desperate for control in her ward, the Nurse soon resorts to giving McMurphy
shock therapy and eventually a lobotomy, demonstrating how social control can break
event the most confident of men.
Although Nurse Ratched produces an important allegory for the tension between
conformity and individual liberty, other women of the book also serve as equally
important allegories. Mrs. Bibbit, Vera Harding, and Mrs. Bromden provide further proof
of women’s ability to oppress men even outside the hospital. Mrs. Bibbit, the overbearing
mother of Billy Bibbit, a patient of the ward, oppresses her son by restraining him from
growing up. She tells her thirty-one-year-old son, “Sweetheart, you have scads of time for
things like that. Your whole life is ahead of you” (247) when he wants to go to college
and find a wife. We find that Mrs. Bibbit holds authority in this scenario because she
oppresses her son from fulfilling his potential and from overtaking her own status.
Eventually, his mother’s repression leads to his suicide after the Nurse makes him feel
guilty and threatens to tell Mrs. Bibbit for having sex with a prostitute. On the other hand,
Vera Harding, Harding’s wife, acquires self-pride by marrying a homosexual whom she
visits at an insane institution in order to make fun of, placing her status above his. Not
only does she hint that she cheats on Harding with other men, degrading his status as a
man, but also implies that she holds female rights over those of homosexuals. Finally,
Mrs. Bromden, Chief Bromden’s mother and the white wife of Native American Tee ah
Milatoona, pressures her husband to sell their land to white business men and women.
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Once again, the reader witnesses a display of oppression on behalf of women within
authority, this time associated with racial discrimination. The scope of her dominance
even overshadows Chief Bromden’s name: “You're the biggest by God fool if you think
that a good Christian woman takes on a name like Tee Ah Millatoona. You were born
into a name, so okay, I'm born into a name. Bromden. Mary Louise Bromden” (246).
Each woman in power within the novel finds the need to defend her position within
society by pointing their fingers at those who don’t fit in, such as homosexuals, Native
Americans, African Americans, and the mentally impaired. As Bruce Walker puts it,
“[Kesey’s] goal is to assert those qualities identified as feminine to undermine those
qualities considered masculine” (Walker quoted by Cliffsnotes).
The other women within Kesey’s novel act as foils to Nurse Ratched and her
alliance of powerful women. Kesey presents the other half of the negative spectrum of
feminity by introducing two prostitutes into his novel, Candy and Sandy. Contrasting
Nurse Ratched and her asexual dominance, they represent freedom from the Big Nurse’s
reign and the restoration of masculinity through sexual acts. Although the novel casts
them in favorable light given the circumstances, Candy and Sandy are weak women who
please men for a living and cannot stand up for themselves. When out on the fishing trip,
men from the dock harass Candy, calling out “Hey you, Blondie…Stay here with us
fellows, Blondie” (205), but because she relies on men for her existence, she can do
nothing for herself: “you could tell she was thinking his proposition over when the door
of the bait shop opened and McMurphy came shoving out, past the bunch of them down
the steps” (206). Kesey purposefully presents two negative types of females to contrast
what too much power as apposed to not enough would do to different social groups,
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specifically women. Kesey, despite the references, does not hold women responsible for
the consequences of social control however. Merely, he only uses women as an oppressed
social group that has been growing in force over the years in order to demonstrate social
revenge and control. McMurphy’s character makes it clear that society in general holds
responsibility:
“‘No, that nurse ain't some kinda monster chicken, buddy, what she is is a
ball-cutter. I've seen a thousand of 'em, old and young, men and women. Seen 'em
all over the country and in the homes — people who try to make you weak so
they can get you to toe the line, to follow their rules, to live like they want you to.
And the best way to do this, to get you to knuckle under, is to weaken you by
gettin' you where it hurts the worst.’” (54)
The women in Kesey’s novel provide a prime example of the oppression and struggle
involved in conforming to society.
In his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey analyses the weaknesses of
both men and women to form a good-versus-evil scenario in which to represent the onesided attitude of the prejudice that went on before and during the 1960’s. He set his story
within the rule of the “juggernaut of modern matriarchy” (67), to use women’s fierce
desire to step outside of their stereotypical bondage as the restrictive force upon other
social groups within society including the common man. Through the sacrifice of strong
individuals and the pursuit of confidence in the face of social control, Kesey reminds us
that all men and women are created equal despite the struggles that pursue them.
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Works cited
Foley, Andrew(2001) 'Allegories of freedom: Individual liberty and social conformity in
Ken Kesey's
one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest', Journal of Literary Studies, 17: 1, 31 — 57
Great Books: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest .
Discovery Education, 1999. Full Video.
9 May 2010. <http://www.discoveryeducation.com/>.
Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. New York: New American Library,
1963. Print.
Walker, Bruce Edward. CliffsNotes on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. 10 May 2010
<http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/literature/id-136.html>.