One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Critical Analysis

Thriving, or Just Surviving, in a Man’s World

“Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out, we will fall off the edge,” verbalizes Andrea Dworkin. Gender-roles have been ingrained in the every-day life of people all around the world since the beginnings of civilization. Both One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Hamlet portray typical female stereotypes in different time periods. Due to the representation of women in literature like Hamlet by William Shakespeare and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kessey, and pop-culture, evidence of classic gender-based stereotypes in a consistently patriarchal world are still blatantly obvious in today’s societies.

William Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, Hamlet,

“The Big Nurse” is written as one of the most masculine characters in this novel, and this deception makes it seem as though there has been an advancement in female representation. She was written this way because the single way to have the Nurse taken seriously as an authority figure was to completely de-feminize her. This, in itself, shows the blatant inequality between men and women. The surprise that this woman had more strength than the men shows how ingrained gender-roles are into society. “No compact or lipstick or woman stuff." (Kessey 4) This quote implies that women are expected to wear makeup on an everyday basis in order to be considered beautiful. One young women on the popular social media Tumblr explains, “Ha-ha girls are all like, “Don’t look at me without makeup on!!!!: maybe because we are taught from a very young age that we’re ugly without makeup. If we don’t wear it we’re asked why we look so tired, why we didn’t make an effort today, why we seem slobbish. As we grow older if we don’t wear makeup we’re seen as unprofessional and it can actually affect our careers but no yeah it definitely doesn’t make sense that we’re insecure about our naked

Hamlet by William Shakespeare is an incredibly classic piece of literature that shows the beginnings of the patriarchy and slut-shaming as expressed to the public. Ken Kessey’s, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, represents a more advanced time that still lives according to gender stereotypes despite a strong female lead. Today, children are still preconditioned from before the time they can read that women should like traditionally feminine aspects of life, and that they will never be able to account for more than, or as much as, men. How will girls ever truly “follow their dreams” if they are constantly reminded from birth that they will never be equal to