Ken Kesey and feminism

So I decided to do the feminist movement in conjunction with “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. The novel is littered with hidden feminist movement hatred. I know it’s quite apparent that Ken Kesey was trying to get a message across about how much he disliked the movement; but I have no clue how far that hatred ran. While doing my research I found a really good academic journal about Ken Kesey and the novel and I was surprised at the information it gave me about him.

The novel pretty much argues that masculinity can’t deal with femininity, or in simpler terms , men can’t be men when women are in power. This isn’t surprising because anyone who reads the book can figure this out. What surprised me was that Kesey had struggled with feminism during his entire life; not just during the movement. Something must have happened to him as a child to distrust women as much as he did. The journal also goes on to explain how Kesey was disturbed when a feminist, Robin Morgan, held a lecture that ridiculed his work and argued that “to be a real Ken Kesey-type man, one should slap dumb women.”. She does have a point, and the character Randle P. McMurphy showcases this perfectly within the novel. I’ll talk more about the characters in a bit, but I would like to keep talking about Kesey for a tad bit longer. Kesey, and many other men, all shared the fear that if women graduated to more powerful positions and gained power, they would become emasculated. He incorporated this into the novel by adding nurse Ratched, electroshock therapy, lobotomy, and the asylum ward as the setting. Kesey must have thought long and hard as to how he was going to showcase his attitudes towards the feminist movement without stating it bluntly. I will applaud him for how he did this because it probably wasn’t easy. But being a woman, I can’t help but feel a bit of anger towards Kesey because of the female characters in the book and how he portrays the entire gender. He makes it look as though women will either over power the men and completely take away all of their masculine freedom, or that they are complete ditsy and easy to get.



There are two types of women with the novel as I stated above; either they are in power and vicious or they are easy and dumb. Nurse Ratched is symbolic of the feminists and what they are trying to do (in the eyes of Kesey of course). She is the mental castrator of the men and she represses her feminine sexuality which is symbolic of the women fighting for their rights. They would rather rebel against the social norm of women and be in a position of power instead of just being labeled as a woman. She also emasculates the men by chastising them and saying “ aren’t you ashamed” which mentally belittles them. Or she can be more severe and give them electroshock therapy or a lobotomy. Unlike nurse Ratched, Candy is a prostitute in the novel. She represents the way men would like the women to be; easy and non- argumentative. She is there to just occupy the men and have a good time. These two types of woman are juxtaposed so that Kesey can showcase how he feels about women. He doesn’t like if they are in control (he feels emasculated ), but if they are for his pleasure and he is smarter than them, he is perfectly okay with them. He doesn’t feel threatened by women who hold up to the societal demands of women back then. I want to believe that Randle P. McMurphy is a character that Kesey molded as a representation of himself.

Randle P. McMurphy (who I shall call R.P.M from now on) is a fictionalized Kesey. His views on women are the same as Kesey’s and he is the stereotypical macho man. He hates nurse Ratched with a passion, yet he likes the prostitutes. As I started above both types of women are symbolic of the feminist movement and the social norm. Again R.P.M upholds the same views as Kesey. When R.P.M has the lobotomy is a “succinct and powerful metaphor for Kesey’s vision of the masculine condition”. Kesey likens getting a lobotomy to losing masculinity to women who are in power. R.P.M ends up dying at the end of the book after is lobotomy. Having the book end so ambiguously it shows us that Kesey doesn’t feel that there will be a resolution to the feminist movement.


Ken Kesey was afraid of the modernizing of femininity; he was one of many men who saw this new movement as a threat to his way of life. He certainly voiced his opinion within the novel and his message came across loud and clear. Just because I disagree with his way of thinking doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the novel, I did. I just feel as though he was so misguided and chauvinistic, not all women in power turn out to be the mental castrator he has made them out to be. We are all entitled to our opinions and I respect his. I would still recommend this book to everyone because it is such a good read!