"Hell yes, we have a quota... Let's keep women out when we can. We don't want them here - and they don't" I don't want them not anywhere else, whether they admit it or not." This statement, made by an anonymous medical school dean in 1960, generated an uproar within the feminist community. Two years later, author Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, a novel that sparked second-wave feminism, a political movement centered on women's right to work and exit the domestic sphere. These ideals, however, were not without backlash. Many men thought that women would push them out of the place of work and firmly believed in the role of housewife. The same year that The Feminine Mystique was written, Ken Kesey published One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a novel that shows the author's misogyny through his portrayal of women. The antagonist, Nurse Ratched, is a woman in a position of power who uses her power to belittle and control patients in the psychiatric ward, thus earning her the nickname "ball cutter". The rest of the novel is littered with female characters who overpower the men in the psychiatric ward. Kesey uses the sexuality and movement of the female characters within the novel to suggest that women in power are unnatural, portraying powerful women as stiff and rigid and subordinate women as loose and sexual. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Through Nurse Ratched's hidden sexuality and rigid movement, Kesey shows that women in power are unnatural because women must change their natural tendencies to have power. Kesey illustrates that women must cover their sexuality to gain power, because men dominate women through sex. At the beginning of the novel, Miss Ratched covers her body to have full power over the ward. However, Kesey characterizes Miss Ratched as a sexually attractive person by emphasizing her very large breasts: "For all her attempts to hide them in that sexless dress, you can still make out the evidence of some rather extraordinary breasts" (159). Even though Miss Ratched has attractive physical characteristics, Kesey shows how men cannot overpower her because her "asexual attitude" hinders her vision of the natural order of power. Then, towards the end of the novel, McMurphy, portrayed as the savior, tears open Miss Ratched's uniform. When she returns to the unit after the attack, the narrator, Chief Bromden, describes her appearance: "Although she was smaller, tighter, and starchier than her old uniforms, she could no longer hide the fact that she was a woman" (268 ). When McMurphy violently attacks Nurse Ratched, he is asserting his physical dominance over hers. Kesey sees this as the natural order; women are subordinate to men only because of their bodies. After the attack "she can no longer hide the fact" of being a woman because her masculine façade generated by her "starched uniform" has been attacked. Nurse Ratched became subordinate when her sexuality was exposed because she no longer possessed the masculinity that Kesey claims is necessary for power. To further his ideology that empowered women are unnatural, Kesey not only uses Nurse Ratched's hidden sexuality, but also her mechanical, unnatural movements. To further his argument against women in power, Kesey uses several minor characters to compliment Mrs. Ratched by playing stiffs as well. Because the Combine, or the institutionsof society, it's such a broad concept, Kesey needs to show other women in positions of power throughout the Combine to strengthen his argument. Kesey uses a memory of Chief Bromden for the first time to further illustrate his disillusionment with women unnaturally in the workplace. When a woman comes to Chief Bromden's house to appraise the land, Kesey immediately views her as an antagonist. He is a leader within the Combine set bent on destroying the natural lands of the Indian reservation. Kesey then draws connections between this woman and Miss Ratched through the woman's dress when he writes, "an old white-haired woman in a dress so stiff and heavy it must be armor" (179). Kesey compares Miss Ratched's nurse's attire and this woman's "armored plate" as stiff and unsexual. However, this woman's dress is more exaggerated as it has been compared to a knight's armor to ward off sexual attacks from men. The outfit not only hides the women's sexuality, but limits movement and is unnaturally “heavy” for such a hot day. The woman also wants to destroy the natural landscape of the reserve, going against nature both literally and figuratively. Kesey uses rigid, unnatural, and restrictive clothing to once again illustrate that women in power are unnatural. Finally, rigidity is also represented through Billy's mother, a woman who is close friends with Miss Ratched and abuses her power as a mother, "... took [her son] out to sit near where I was, on the grass. She sat stiff there on the grass” (246). Kesey places her in a natural setting being unnaturally stiff, just like the woman in the reservation. Usually, when people sit outside on the grass, they lie down casually on their own comfortable, but not Billy's mother, whose rigidity seems uncomfortable. Kesey uses her connection with Miss Ratched to show Billy's mother's supreme power over her son's life while holding him back from recovery " by sleeping with Candy, he kills himself because he cannot face his mother, giving her the ultimate power over him. A mother is someone who should be “the cure” for her sons or daughters, not their death. So not only her rigidity is unnatural, but so is her position as the mother who killed her son. Through Billy's mother's rigidity and her position of power in an antagonistic role, Kesey states that women should not be in positions of power because it is clearly unnatural. In the novel's minor female characters, Kesey asserts their unnatural positions of power through hidden sexuality and rigid movements comparable to those of Miss Ratchets. To further her stance on women in power, Kesey plays a prostitute, Candy, with brazen sexuality and a debauched attitude. movement to highlight the natural female position of subordination. Kesey makes it obvious that Candy is the exact opposite of Mrs. Ratched when Chief Bromden describes Candy's clothes, "...it didn't seem like it was material enough to go around considering what it had to cover" (197). If Nurse Ratched covers herself with her clothes, Candy is just the opposite as she doesn't even have "enough material" to cover her body. Nurse Ratched is used to show Kesey's belief that it is unnatural for women to be in power, while Candy serves to show the position Kesey considers natural for women: subordination. To show his fascination with Candy's character, Kesey makes Candy the only reason men can go fishing. Only one car comes to pick them up, and McMurphy needs a second car to get all the men to the dock. The.”