Alice Monroe Boys And Girls

Over all, the narrator's parents demonstrate stereotypical male and female roles in the house, which shape the girl's identity in a certain way where she likes her dad's character more and wants to be like him even though she is a girl.

The daughter is bored with her mother's dreams and lets her pride take over. She often questions her self-worth, and she decides that she respects herself as nothing more than the normal girl that she is and always will be. Her mother is trying to mold her into something that she can never be, she believes, and only by her futile attempts to rebel can she hold on to the respect that she has for herself. The daughter is motivated only to fail so that she may continue on her quest to be normal. Her only motivation for success derives from her own vanity; although she cannot admit it to herself or her mother, she wants the audience to see her as that something that she is not, that same something that her mother hopes she could be.

Kincaid doesn’t bother with throwing everything into quotations and the entirety of the story is essentially one sentence joined by semicolons. This style gives the work an overall matter of fact tone. The nagging voice is immediately evident in “Wash the clothes on Monday and put them on a stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on a clothesline to dry…” (Fader/Rabinowitz pg. 66). The reader can also get a sense of the cultural expectations of the main character through the domestic imagery throughout the text. The girl is expected to uphold certain roles within her home and is instructed as to how to behave and not draw attention to herself. Her mother assumed that her daughter’s behavior was inappropriate and any protest she offered to defend herself was shot down. Kincaid drives her point home effectively when in the very last line: “...you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?” (Fader/Rabinowitz pg. 67). The reader can see the mother’s surprise towards her daughter’s innocent question. The girl was unable to learn how to be adult and conduct herself properly, even after all of her mother’s speeches and

For example, throughout her childhood she never had a truly stable home. Her family was constantly moving from place to place around the country, and as her father said, “doing the skedaddle” whenever inconveniences arose, like debt collectors catching up to them or getting into trouble with the law. Second, her father always spent the majority of their money on beer and other alcoholic beverages at bars, and they frequently had no food to eat and were starving. The children often had to fend for themselves to find food when they were hungry without the assistance of their parents. Jeannette often subdued her and her siblings’ difficulties by taking charge of herself and her siblings to acquire food and by standing up for herself whenever it was necessary. For example, she stood up for herself whenever her mother was being selfish and pompous. Her mother would hide snacks and eat them secretly without sharing, and she would also spend days sobbing and complaining about how she had to do everything. During those times, Jeannette often took charge and directly criticized her mother about not doing her job. After her dad whipped her, Jeannette vowed to escape Welch for good and began saving up money to leave and move away. As a result of her struggles, over the years Jeannette had become very hard-working and diligent at whatever work she did. This lead her to become very successful in the future. She

She uses her desire to further her education, an escape plan with her sister, and her shame from being a forager to motivate her to bring a change into her life. Despite the constrictions

The daughter had a life plan. She wants to be successful even though people will alienate her for the fact that she has the qualities of someone from a low income family. “In pottery class I’m making a jar with a lid. If it comes out all right I think I’ll use it for a jewel box as we don’t ever eat marmalade. Jolley demonstrates that the sister knows she does not have a lot of things that people high up on the social status would normally have. The author uses characterization to provide the reader with an insight of how each individual lives in a low income family.

Being a part of the outdoor world and assisting her father out on the farm was important to her. The girl was pleased when her father complimented her hard work, she “turned away and raked furiously, red in the face with pleasure” (4). Although, whenever the narrator’s mother asked for help she quickly did the task, but she stated, “as soon as I was done I ran out of the house... before my mother thought of what she wanted me to do next” (4). It seems as if she did not want to be like her mother. She viewed her mother as boring, and she did not want to become a modern housewife with little importance to the world. The girl clearly stated “it seemed to me that work in the house was endless, dreary, and peculiarly depressing; work done out of doors, and in my father's service, was ritualistically important” (4). Nevertheless, as the girl aged, her personality towards life began to change. She had been comfortable with the idea of killing animals and found herself watching the process, but later, she matured into a girl who “didn't think of watching it” (9). Without showing regret, the girl seemed to be

Through such actions of defiance and revolt, she manages to keep herself “free” from the social gender pressures imposed upon her. This girl feels imprisoned by her family, as she thrives on what is accepted as “a man’s job”. Furthermore, it is through her imagination that she is able to escape reality, inventing a “world that is recognizably [her] own”. She imagines “opportunities for courage, boldness and self-sacrifice,” where she can ride horses and save lives. This young girl’s ambitions and dreams to live a man’s life are impeded by her mother and grandmother’s protests to “act like a girl”.

In the 20th century, the average home life in rural Oklahoma was full of hard workers in the pursuit of the picture-perfect home surrounded by plentiful land. The sun rose over the land, signaling the commencement of the day ahead. The farmer had already been awake since before the sun broke the horizon, preparing his little equipment and his animals for his land’s work. The farmer’s wife was in the kitchen, cooking her husband a warm breakfast as a sign of her gratitude. Their children woke and soon were running into the kitchen, bellies growling. After gobbling up the breakfast, they ran outside to play and do chores of their own. The rest of the farmer’s wife’s day was spent cleaning, cooking, and looking after the kids until the sun went down and it was time for bed. Set in this time, The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck, holds contrasting female characters. Some characters show the defiance of the gender roles at the time, while others adhere to them. In some instances, a female character can surpass the expectations set upon her by the patriarchal society in which they live she lives, setting her free to use a voice she never was allowed.

Sometimes her mom would make her help with cutting onions or peeling peaches and as soon as she was done she would run out the door when her mom’s back was turned. She viewed the chores inside the house was endless and depressing and would much rather work outside. She hears her mother stating that she can’t wait till the son, Laird gets bigger so he can do the chores outside and the girl can do the chorus inside with her. The mother states, “I just get my back turned and she runs off. It’s not like I had a girl in the family at all.” At this point the girl feels like she can’t trust her mother, she knows her mother loved her yet she feels like her mom is always plotting against her to keep her from working with her father. She didn’t expect her father to really listen to what her mother was saying, Laird, in her mind wouldn’t be able to do the job as well as she does. Looking at her father’s bloody apron she reminds that reader that the foxes were feed horse meat, other farmers whose horses will get old or injured would call her father and him and henry would go kill it and butchered it. However, if they already had a lot of meat they would keep them for a while. The winter she turned eleven they had two horses, Flora and Mack. It was this winter where she heard her mother go on more about her helping in the house. She states that she no longer feels safe because the people around her who thought the same way. She stated, “The word girl had formerly seemed to

As the concluding factor of the mother’s genuine interest, she expresses her voice to the reader as a woman who has been through her share of experiences that turned her into who she is today. Since her daughter is getting to an age where she needs to take up the responsibilities of a woman, the mother felt the need to take it upon herself to teach her daughter to do and act in the right, acceptable way. By doing this, she tries to present her voice as outgoing yet strict, because she wants her daughter to realize that she will face so many obstacles if she decides to act in a way that is unacceptable to

          In an attempt to reflect the girl's changing awareness of her social identity and femininity, Munro weaves in a young sorrel mare, Flora. As the expectations of the girl's pending role in society grow, Flora takes up residence in the stable and adds an "air of gallantry and abandon" (470) to the girl's sheltered life. Just as the girl experiences confusion and angst, "Flora [is] given to fits of violent alarm" (470) of more of tangible nature. An approaching crossroad in Flora's life, namely her death, parallels the crossroad of identity the girl is facing. With the realization of Flora's death, the girl adopts "a new wariness, a sense of holding-off, in [her] attitude to [her] father and his work" (473), causing her to question the very foundation of her social opinions up to that point. By allowing Flora to escape through the gate, the girl symbolically opens the passageway to her feminine side. Even in its futility, this act sets the

The feeling of pride swelling up within her is because of that fact that her father acts as her primary role model for. In the society she lives in, girls often associate themselves with their mothers and take after them but such is not the case for the protagonist. She spends the vast majority of her time outside helping out her father with whatever work she is capable of doing. Her mother expresses her disgust for the work that her husband does as the protagonist states that her mother “[dislikes] the whole pelting operation”(100). This dislike can be attributed to the stereotype that women in this society are typically thought to have, as they do not associate themselves with such grueling and filthy work. While the mother finds the work to be off-putting the girl expresses polar opinions as she finds the smell of decaying fox carccases to be “reassuringly seasonal” (100). Her association with the smell paralleling the season of autumn emphasizes her innocence and naivete as she cannot differentiate between what society deems conventional and what is customary to her. Due to most of her time being spent outside and around men, her idiosyncratic behaviour is further reinforced. This initiates a positive feedback for the protagonist as the more she involves herself with her father and his work, the more that she yearns to be like her father. She envisions herself to be like him in the future, which would mean that she

mother tried to her in to work inside the house which I would say to

The young girl in “Boys and Girls” by Munro, follows her father around and does the job of a “boy”. She was learning to shoot a gun, gave the foxes water, raked the grass after her father cut it and made a canopy for the foxes with it, and anything else her father told her to do. She thought the work in the house by her mother was “ endless, dreary and peculiarly depressing.” Yet, “Work done out of doors, and in my father’s service, was ritualistically important.” Whenever her mother gave her “female” jobs to do indoors, she would “ run out of the house, trying to get out of earshot before (her) mother thought of what she wanted her to do next.” She loathed the womanly work done inside. She did