Women In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Nurse Ratched exposes the men’s weaknesses by getting each of them to point out each other’s flaws. Kesey shows that when women hold leadership roles, it takes away a man 's ability to be a man and leaves the man with physical damage. In the story, McMurphy explains to Harding about Nurse Ratched and how she is manipulating the men, using her influence to emasculate them. He says, “The hell with that; she’s a bitch and a buzzard and a ball-cutter, and don’t kid me, you know what I’m talking about” (Kesey, 61). By using the phrase “ball-cutter,” Kesey implies that because she is a woman and has more power than the men, she is depriving them of what makes them a man.

The text One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Kesey, 1962) communicates a unique social hierarchy, but the use of power within this society discusses the idea of gender and preservation of power. The text is set within a mental asylum, and within this society the figure of authority is nurse Ratched. It has been noted that men are commonly seen to be in positions of power and highly respected within society. This text reverses the stereotype, but through this reversal conveys the way in which a female in power is not equal to a male in power. A 2012 study by students at Washington University in St. Louis state that ‘Not all power is created equal’, but rather the level of power a person has is dependent on various elements of society such as cultural

The play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell is largely based on stereotypes. The most prevalent one explores the difference between gender roles. Glaspell exerts the repression of women in the 1900s. During that time, women were highly looked down upon by men, and were only seen as the housekeepers and child bearers. This example is displayed throughout the play with the men, however, the women in this play prove that the stereotypes of gender roles held against them are completely wrong, which is shown through the characters, set design, and symbolism.

In Ken Kesey’s comic novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, gender is a definer of one's power in the hospital, and this leads to Nurse Ratched hiding her femininity, the patients’ attempts to boost their own masculinity, and both sides trying to expose the other. Kesey uses these examples to explain that men cannot handle a female leader. Nurse Ratched, a female who is head of the ward, attempts to hide her femininity so the men respect her power. At the beginning of the novel, Bromden is describing the Nurse’s appearance. He states, “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” (6).

When, the harsh words Lovato received overthrew the love that was there, she became swept up in the whirlwind. Therefore, her tragic flaw that ultimately leads to her suffering is her lack of self confidence when faced with opposing forces. For the modern tragic hero, the downfall occurs when her situation with bullies spiteful words started to build up inside of her until she finally can not take it anymore. For instance, Demi’s tyrants would call her “fat”, she believed them, and would soon after develop unhealthy eating disorders, anorexia, bulimia, and so much more in the future. After Demi Lovato had done so much self harm, Lovato undergoes recognition, a shift from ignorance about her own

“The Yellow Wall-paper” is not just a story of insanity, it is a story of mistreatment due to the sexist ideas placed upon women which facilitate the lack of necessary and proper treatment for mental illness.               Mental illness is a unique disease, because in most cases it remains invisible. The mind of a person who is suffering can be in complete disarray on the inside, but on the outside, they may look or seem perfectly healthy and content. Therefore, believing someone who voices concern for their mental health is incredibly important and detrimental to the healing process. However, the behavior of our narrator’s husband is the complete opposite of this.

Phaedra from Hippolytus by Euripides and Medea from Medea by Euripides are sympathetic victims of the patriarchy. The women hold very little power and are representative of the dysfunction that can arise from a calculated, male-dominated society skewed by a disproportionate power struggle. From the start of both plays, Hippolytus and Medea, it is clear that both women are fated to be victims because their actions, though cruel, are simply reactions to the injustices they have been subject to and occur as a result of the lack of power among women, and these acts are catalyzed by oppression. It is true that Phaedra and Medea committed cruel crimes against their loved ones, but these violent acts were self-preservative in nature.

Grossman states that the character of a femme fatale is repeatedly depicted as an antagonist or a dangerous woman, which causes the audience to not side with her or feels any sympathy towards because the patriarchy is structured in a way where man is supposed to have all the power and women cannot (p.4). Most femme fatale become either power hungry or tainted, which leads them to be

The sister of the protagonist Pip, Mrs. Joe Gargery is a good example, from the moment she is introduced the reader gets an awful view of her, she is represented as violent and everything in her character makes her unattractive. :” I had known, from the time when I could speak, that my sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me “(Great expectations,1992 ,p.53) What there can be concluded from these examples is that Dickens, the male writer, did not mean the reader to have much sympathy for these female characters. From deep within they are not good people and they deserve what they get. It seems as though Dickens generalizes the entire female population as being corrupt and impure at the core.

As we move through the passage, we see Adriana shift her emotions of depression away from her husband and towards her naïve sister. Adriana becomes so enraged with her sister’s comments, that she refers to Luciana’s mentality as “servant like” (2.1.26). Since servants were treated as the lowest members of society, it is clear that Adriana feels as though Luciana is making a fool out of herself. Shakespeare portrays Luciana in a manner that would suggest that she is an expert on marriage, which is contradictory in itself as Luciana is not yet married. Her tone, while initially understanding and compassionate, quickly turns into one of arrogance and righteousness.

The mocking results in a lowered self-esteem, which prevents women from progressing by keeping women below the social standing of men. By doing such, women lose their rights and their ability to control the sanctity of their own bodies as well as their morals

She loses herself, as I would imagine Sophie to do after a life time of oppression. Jane saw a woman in the wall, and then became her. She took on that identity, and in her mind, then became free of ruling and imprisonment. All of my sympathy for any of the other characters in this work went solely to Jane. Her obvious mental instability made the story difficult for me to read- not because it’s what’s wrong with her, but what’s wrong with professional medical abuse, which especially back then was an ongoing problem in addition to today.

Women said that they needed power and wanted to make their own decisions. Men completely disagreed. “To their frustration, women found, just as female activists had a century earlier, that the men in these social reform movements were reluctant to give women any substantial

For decades the nursing industry has been stereotyped as a woman’s place. In 1975, the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest displayed this in full force. In the movie, Randle McMurphy is sent from prison to a mental institution for evaluation. McMurphy has repeated problems with Nurse Ratched, the Head Nurse. This movie is a prime example of the stereotypical view of the nursing industry at that time because all the nurses are women and the orderlies are men.

1. Introduction One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest written by Ken Kesey is a story of defiance and insanity. This novel especially focuses on the severe consequences you may induce if you are to fight back against authority figures. This is an important lesson for today's youth to learn and remember. That is why Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is still relevant in today’s society.