An instance of the reversal of female dominance can be seen through the character Billy Babbit. Billy Babbit, thirty-one-years-old, still remains his mothers weak, incompetent son, he is fated to stay an innocent child by his mother's hand. After having intercourse with a prostitute, Babbit gains a new feeling of manhood, only to be crushed by the nurse's threats to tell his mother about what he has done. He knows how his mother will take the news, forcing him to commit suicide. Terance Martin's analyzes of characters in the novel are expressed as, "Women in the novel, one comes to see quickly, are powerful forces of control. They represent sinister contemporary versions of feminist tradition in American literature" (Martin 314). This reference makes note that women in the past have typically been acknowledged as fragile characters. But in the novel, men are considered to be weak. Another example of the inversion of traditional roles can be examined through the character Harding. Harding can be seen as an ineffectual individual, which the role between him and his wife are reversed. His "lovely hands" and his sex-driven, power hungry wife easily embarrass him. Even when she comes to visit the psychiatric ward, Harding feels like a kid who is inferior to his own wife.
Dichotomist feelings about Nurse Ratchet may be felt throughout the novel. She is obviously a static character who takes command as if she were a dictator. Even though she is not in a position of total authority, she takes her power into her own hands and controls everyone including the doctor. The patients in the hospital explain, " she's impregnable with the element of time working for her, she gets inside everyone-(70). Clearly everyone sees her as an object of pure evil and supremacy. Julian Moynahan explains her examination of the Big Nurse as," a woman, in alliance to modern technology, the destroyer of masculinity and sensuous enjoyment" (Moynahan 277).
