Nurse Ratched: Evil Nurses

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Nurse Ratched is the evil nurse in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962). She is the Evil Woman as autocratic, the absolute power in a psychiatric ward, which is the ultimate “total institution”. 

“Big Nurse” is determined to eliminate every trace of male independence and spontaneity, castrating them and rendering them passive. Her machine-like (“ratchet”) lack of emotion is monstrous. She is as far from the caring feminine nurse-ideal as possible.

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This event was on Thu, 18 Mar 2021

Joanna Bourke

Professor Joanna Bourke

Professor of Rhetoric

Professor Bourke is Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College.

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