Alice Munro Gender Stereotypes

In Alice Munro short story “Boys and Girls” is about a young girl confused in life about herself maturing into a young women that takes place on a fox farm in Jubilee, Ontario, Canada with her parents and her younger brother. The character of the young girl that is not specified by a name in the story is struggling with the roles that are expected by her peers of a young women in the 1940’s. This young girl has been helping her father on the fox farm for many years in which brought so much of a joy in her life. As she gets older, as well and as her younger brother Laird grows older, she is starting to realize that her younger brother will be soon be taking over the roles and responsibility of taking care of the animals. Then her mother and grandmother points out the anticipations of her to start acting more like how a young women of her age should present themselves and this has great emotional effects on her, and at the end of the story she shows a final act of disobedience against her father, but it only shows the thing she resist the most, her maturing into a young women and becoming her own person.

In Alice Munro’s short story “Boys and Girls,” our narrator is a young farm girl on the verge of puberty who is learning what it means to be a “girl.” The story shows the differing gender roles of boys and girls – specifically that women are the weaker, more emotional sex – by showing how the adults of the story expect the children to grow into their respective roles as a girl and a boy, and how the children grow up and ultimately begin to fulfill these roles, making the transition from being “children” to being “young adults.”

Equality between men and women is not always accepted in society. In the previous era, men were seen as the person who had the rights to rule over others and who could work outside the home. But the woman was seen only as a woman from home, she had the responsibility of taking care of the children, doing all household chores and her opinion was never considered. In Alice Munro story “Boys and Girls “, the narrator of the story is a girl who lives on a fox farm with her parents and a younger brother but her character is seen between the conflict with society and her desires because the difference of role that plays each genre.

Stereotypes are commonly held generalized beliefs that most or all individuals sharing a given trait also should or do share other attributes assumed to be associated with aspects such as race, religion, and physical attribute. While stereotypes can erroneously shape people’s views of others, they can also influence the stereotyped individuals’ behavior as people often attempt to conform to these flawed images, especially in regards to gender stereotypes. Shakespeare’s great play Othello uses its main characters to embody the characteristics of the stereotypical females and males according to society’s liking. The stereotypical woman is loyal and faithful to her husband, while the male stereotype possesses strength, control, and dominance.

The movie gives the message that women must do acknowledge their responsibilities towards themselves, which can and should never be neglected or postponed for the sake of anyone or anything. Nothing in this world is worth sacrificing your own aspirations for. A person’s greatest assets are self-respect, dignity and individuality. Woman should safeguard her identity by not letting her individuality get submerged and by keeping her priorities intact all her life and creating a place for herself.

In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls,” there is a time line in a young girl’s life when she leaves childhood and its freedoms behind to become a woman. The story depicts hardships in which the protagonist and her younger brother, Laird, experience in order to find their own rite of passage. The main character, who is nameless, faces difficulties and implications on her way to womanhood because of gender stereotyping. Initially, she tries to prevent her initiation into womanhood by resisting her parent’s efforts to make her more “lady-like”. The story ends with the girl socially positioned and accepted as a girl, which she accepts with some unease.

Throughout the years, history has tried to examine how gender roles have changed over time and views of how women should be have changed. However there are many examples of current stereotypes of women that linger in today's society.

This highlights the realistic atmosphere prevailing as well as reflects the true meaning of relationship. The readers are exposed to the mother-son relationship. It can be seen that even if the narrator is a twenty-year old law student, he is still the little boy who needed his neck scrubbed from the point of view of the mother. Whatever good advice the son gives, it is not followed and instead he is given a lecture. This is a typical mother-son relationship which shows that no matter how much a child grows, he always remains a little kid for the mother. Moreover, the readers also notice the routine life of the narrator and his mother. The boy used to accompany his mother to work and help her which makes a four-hour job becomes two. There is solidarity, strong family bond and understanding between them because although he did not like his mother

In Alice Munro’s short story “Boys and Girls”, the author explains the transition from being a tomboy girl to becoming a woman. The protagonist is

In Alice Munro’s short story, Boys and Girls, the underlying theme displayed throughout the entirety of the story is conforming and defying to society’s gender expectations. This is shown through the literary device, symbolism. Symbolism is seen through Flora the horse and the protagonist’s mother.

There was a time when society did not consider men and women as equal. Men were considered as the superior human being and the dominant figures of authority in the house while the woman had to be a subservient. Alice Munro uses some interesting details in “Boys and Girls” to hold the readers captive. She takes us on a journey in an era where the male child was deemed more important than the female child. “Boys and Girls is a story about a girl’s struggle in accepting the role society has forced upon her in such a vivid manner that it draws the reader to want to know what happens next. In “Telling Tails,” by Tim O’Brien, he illustrates what a good story should be by using story examples. O’Brien believes that “Boys and Girls” is good story because the author uses a well-imagined plot, striking and dramatic elements, and the ability to reach deep into the heart of readers.

An Annotated Bibliography for The Main Cause In Negative Gender Stereotypes and Traditional Gender Roles:

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary stereotype is a, “a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing”. Society puts out a certain set of standards and roles of men and women and the way in which they should act, known as gender roles. According to these behaviour stereotypes, the ideal man is intelligent, physically strong, heroic, in charge and is ultimately there to provide for his family. In comparison, the typical women is portrayed as beautiful, delicate, inferior to men and are viewed as the housekeeper; taking care of the children and putting food on the table while the men goes to work. These gender roles start to be enforced at a very young age as a result of society and the media. A prime example of this is Disney and the movies they create for young children. Almost all Disney movies are based

All characters in the novel are living in a man’s world; nevertheless, the author has tried to change this world by the help of her characters. She shows a myriad of opportunities and different paths of life that woman can take, and more importantly she does not show a perfect world, where women get everything they want, she shows a world where woman do make mistakes, but at the same time they are the ones that pay for these mistakes and correct them.

This paper explores various facets of gender roles in order to understand this topic such as what role males and females are expected to play in today's society, how gender roles are decided, affected and exaggerated by stereotyping. Futhermore, this paper will draw attention towards how stereotyping leads to gender biases.