An Analysis Of Boys And Girls By Alice Munro

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.

Although the daughter’s shame in her mother is evident, she is also prideful of her as well. The strong love that the mother and daughter share is pervasive throughout the story. The story is being told by the daughter after she is all grown up. The fact that Jones uses such vivid detail on the mother’s preparation for her daughters first day of school shows that the daughter loved her mom and all that she did for her. The daughter recalls that her mother spent a lot of time preparing her when she says, “My mother has uncharacteristically spent nearly an hour on my hair that morning, plaiting and replaiting so that now my scalp tingles.” (Jones) She also remembers that her “pale green slip and underwear are new, the underwear having come three to a plastic package with a little girl on the front who appears to be dancing.” (Jones) The daughter having remembered details like these illustrate that she has an immense love and takes pride

When we are adolescents we see the world through our parents' eyes.  We struggle to define ourselves within their world, or to even break away from their world.  Often, the birth of our "self" is defined in a moment of truth or a moment of heightened self-awareness that is the culmination of a group of events or the result of a life crisis or struggle.  In literature we refer to this birth of "self" as an epiphany.  Alice Munro writes in "Boys and Girls" about her own battle to define herself.  She is torn between the "inside" world of her mother and the "outside" world of her father.  In the beginning her father's world prevails, but by the finale, her mother's world invades her

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.

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.

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.

In Boys and Girls, the main character feels constantly restrained and restricted to what other people believe should be the way for things to be conducted, and in turn, how females should conduct themselves. In various ways, the girl attempts to free herself from these limitations that have been set by others, that creates her core identity, in order to pursue a version of herself that she believes truly represents her. Firstly, she often disobeys her mother so that she can have the opportunity to work for her father instead, “As soon as I was done, I ran out of the house, trying to get out of earshot before my mother thought of what she wanted me to do next” (p. 194). She exhibits behavior that indicates that she does not want any part of the draining, dreary housework that contains her inside a world that does not excite her - that is not “ritualistically important” to her. Secondly, at night she often dreams of other worlds - other situations that are not real and will never become reality, “...took place in a world that was recognizably mine, yet one that presented opportunities for courage, boldness, and self-sacrifice, as mine never did” (p. 191), because her dreams allow her the freedom during sleep to be the person she wants to be, and not who people need her to be. She can be brave, and be the hero, in contrast to how she goes about her day-to-day life - without enjoyment when she feels

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

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”.

Throughout the course of time, roles in our society towards gender has evolved. In the story Boys and Girls by Alice Munro relatively has a direct message which is the constant battle of gender stereotypes. The audience is reading through the point of view of the main character, which is a girl, and her frustration she feels. Through the young girl’s experience, Alice Munro is able to show the readers the role of stereotypes or expectations that a female has to fulfill.

In today’s world there are many ideologies that women are set to follow but that are also easy to break through. As society progresses, people have to adjust to new societal norms. The story, “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro is about an 11-year-old girl who lives in a fox-breeding farm, alongside her parents and siblings. The whole point of breeding the foxes is to be able to kill them and later skin them but the horses they own are killed in order to feed and bulk up the foxes. This is an everyday routine for the little girl, who takes pride in helping out her father with outdoor chores. She takes it as a compliment and blushes when her father introduces her as his “hired man” since it is something she prefers doing over house work. She dreads

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.

Knowing that she is expected to become a girl and conform to society’s beliefs and norms, she shows her rebellious side against what she is expected to become by her parents. The narrator’s mother pushes the stereotypes on her more than any other character. First, the mother wants her to wear the girly dress that she made for the narrator; “She stayed up late making a dress of a difficult style” (Munro 990). In addition, the mother also wishes for the girl to work inside with her. Munro shows the lacking desire to work indoors by saying, “keeps me from working for my

Society tries to place many rules upon an individual as to what is acceptable and what is not . One must decide for themselves whether to give in to these pressures and conform to society’s projected image, or rather to resist and maintain their own desired self image. In the story “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro, Munro suggests that this conflict is internal and external and a persons experiences in life will determine which of these forces will conquer. In terms of the unnamed protagonist’s experiences in the story, it becomes clear just how strong the pressure of society to conform really is, as it overcomes and replaces the girl’s self image.

In order to properly view a story from a feminist perspective, it is important that the reader fully understands what the feminist perspective entails. “There are many feminist perspectives, and each perspective uses different approaches to analyze and interpret texts. One is that gender is “socially constructed” and another is that power is distributed unequally on the basis of sex, race, and ethnicity, religion, national origin, age, ability, sexuality, and economic class status” (South University Online, 2011, para. 1). The story “Girl” is an outline of the things young girls