Nurse Ratched: Evil Nurses

An episode of the Gresham College Lectures podcast, hosted by Gresham College, titled "Nurse Ratched: Evil Nurses" was published on March 18, 2021 and runs 38 minutes.

March 18, 2021 ·38m · Gresham College Lectures

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Summary

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. A lecture by Joanna Bourke 18...

Episode Description

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.

A lecture by Joanna Bourke 18 March

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/evil-nurses

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

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