Macbeth And One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Essay

While the role of women is increasing in the media, it still is rare to see any depictions of assertive women, and even rarer are positive ones. In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is married to a thane whom she pushes to claim the throne by any necessary, and must deal with the consequences. In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Nurse Ratched is the most powerful figure in charge of a mental ward and is consistently challenged by one on the inmates, McMurphy. In both Macbeth and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, the authors reject powerful, unsubmissive women by portraying their femininity as a fatal flaw that ultimately brings their demise. Lady Macbeth in Macbeth makes her actions a more masculine by repressing traits such as compassion and remorse that she deems feminine in order to gain power, but cannot handle her conscience and is eventually brought down by her own morality. Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest preserves her power by physically shrouding her femininity and emasculating men; she only loses her power when she is sexually assaulted and her womanhood is used to strip her power.
Lady Macbeth’s repression of her femininity when she first finds out Macbeth’s ambition, before the plan begins and she is convincing Macbeth, and after they have committed the murder lead directly to her maddened, blood-stained dreams. When Lady Macbeth discovers that Macbeth is …show more content…
Unfortunately, what both of the authors missed in their respective works is that femininity does not have to be repressed in order for a woman to be in power. A woman can have power and sensuality, which is something that I look forward to seeing in newer, modern