Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the power relationship between the sexes, whereby masculinity has traditionally maintained its dominant role by depending on women to remain feminine, as it is played out in Ken Kesey's novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." The writer describes how the three assertive women in the novel are depicted as hateful, manipulative, and emasculating, while the whores are shown to be spineless and powerless. Neither type is developed into a character of any depth or complexity. The writer argues that Kesey's focus is, instead, on the personalities of the male characters, for whom women have become a symbol for Otherness, which masculinity must defeat or escape from in order to establish a secured sense of self.

From the Paper:

"With its focus on the struggle between the masculine and the feminine, between Ratchet and McMurphy, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest reflects the masculine angst of the feminine Other. At the time of the novel's publication in 1975, Second Wave feminism aimed to vanquish de facto and official inequalities for women. This kind of emancipation gave rise to the pop-culture image of the "bra burner", which translates almost directly into the 'ball-cutter,' the first archetype of women represented in the novel. Aside from the ball cutter, there is only one other archetype of woman present in the novel."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Butler, Judith. "Introduction." Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex". New York: Routledge, 1993. 1-17.
• Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. New York: Penguin, 1999.
• McRuer, Robert. "Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disability Existence." Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities. Ed. Lennard Davis. New York: Routledge, 2006. 301-308.

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