Nurse Ratched's Stereotypes

Nurse Ratched’s establishment of supreme jurisdiction over the patient's reveals the submission to uncustomary female dominance due to futility of surpassing implemented emasculating tactics. By referring to themselves as submissive to authority, Harding claims:
“The rabbits accept their role in the ritual and recognize the wolf as the strong. In defense, the rabbit becomes sly and frightened and elusive and he digs holes and hides when the wolf is about. And he endures, he goes on. He knows his place. He most certainly doesn’t challenge the wolf to combat. . .We need a good strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place.” (Kesey 57-58)
Through the comparison of the patients to rabbits, Harding recognizes the emasculating domination of …show more content…
In an effort to shame her husband's femininity, Vera Harding inquires, “You know the type, don’t you, Mack?” she says. “The hoity-toity boys with the nice long hair combed so perfectly and the limp little wrists that flip so nice.” Harding asks her if it was only him that they were dropping around to see, and she says any man that drops around to see her flips more than his damned limp wrists” (Kesey 159). Vera Harding’s judgement of Dale’s friends stereotypically feminine characteristics allows her to establish domineering control by creating self consciousness regarding coveted masculinity. Dale Harding’s apprehension of whether or not his friends desire his wife creates creates her accessible control over him as he is aware of the possibility of decreased masculinity in a case of his wife favoring others. Vera’s confirmation that she is in fact sought after, allows her to uphold her matriarchal power at the expense of her husband’s diminishment of masculinity due to his insecurity over not being adequate. In a similar fashion, Dale’s actions are impacted by fear of …show more content…
Harding’s self consciousness upon realizing his wife’s gaze shows the formation of female power stemming from emasculation of men based on their identifying attributes. By deeming her husband’s voice “mousy,” Vera Harding institutes the atypical feminine authority through the diminishment of male masculinity as she compares his speech to that of a female. As affirmed by Fick, Vera also, “embodies the dual threats of regimented society and is the focus of a conventionally ghoulish misogyny. Yet women can also serve the cause of freedom, at least when they do not demand the commitments of adult relationships or marriage.” By referring to Vera as the embodiment of regimented society, it is affirmed that she, as a woman, is the epitome of dominating authority through the control she asserts over her husband. Through stating that women can be the cause of freedom, it reveals that without matriarchal control, men would be granted the ability to exist without fear and submission to women. Commitments of marriage by men, being referred to as confining, demonstrates the commanding authority that Vera, as wife, exercises over her

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