Analysis Of Boys And Girls By Alice Munro

The object of examining gender roles is to answer the question why should women and men be equal and "Are there populations in which men and women are absolutely equal? Are there societies in which women dominate men?" (Gender 238) By understanding the culture in which this piece of literature is written, the gender roles and the rules of behavior for a woman, then the relationships between genders can be realized. The general myth about women and their gender role in the American society is that the mother works in the home and supports her man in every way. For each relationship, the people in that relationship must decide the particular roles that they will play. In the literary work "Girl", Kincaid shows clearly that the woman's role in this work was to serve the family and to work mainly in the house. The mother writing this story tells her daughter that "this is how you iron your father's khaki shirt so that it doesn't have a crease" (Kincaid 489). In this marriage, it is understood that the wife is to do the laundry for the husband. Today's society does not always provide these clear roles since many women work a full time job and the house chores are a responsibility for both to handle. Though the woman is still mainly held responsible for the home. There should be a constant search for equality in gender roles. Kincaid explains how the man is working to bring home the money and the wife supports

The narration of the mother lecturing her daughter with commanding diction leads to the theme of women conforming to domesticity and if they don’t conform then they will lead a life of promiscuity that will affect the way people perceive them. Women in the past believed that a woman’s role was that of a domesticated housewife. The narration of the third point of view in this story and the commanding diction of it places an importance in the reinforcement of this idea, that if a woman doesn’t follow social norms, she will eventually turn to a “slut” one that her family will be ashamed of. She must set the table for lunch and for breakfast that is “how to behave in the presence of men who don’t know [her] very well, and that it the way they won’t recognize immediately the slut that [the mother has] warned her against becoming.”(Kincaid 485) through her commanding diction, the mother is telling her daughter how to set a table, how to cook, she

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

As Helen is influenced by the social expectation, she takes the traditional role of women; she symbolizes the powerless housewife mentions in “Doing Gender”. According to “Doing Gender”, it is stated that “[the traditional role of] women would be primarily focused on housekeeping, childcare, and children’s education...Further, in the case of conflict, the man

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 the countless lessons about washing clothes and handling food, she reveals something about herself: that to her, there is no life outside of the one that she has, and she approves only of the same life for her daughter. That as a girl, her daughter must know these things, because her daughter’s only lot in life will be the same one that she has now. The mother’s worldview isn’t the only thing affecting the teachings of these lessons, though. Another strong influence behind these lessons revolves around the mother’s personal

For centuries, women have had the role of being the perfect and typical house wife; needs to stay home and watch the children, cook for husbands, tend to the laundry and chores around the house. In her short story “Girl”, Jamaica Kincaid provides a long one sentence short story about a mother giving specific instructions to her daughter but with one question towards the end, with the daughter’s mother telling her daughter if she had done all the instructions to become a so called “perfect” woman, every man would want her. Kincaid’s structuring in “Girl,” captures a demanding and commanding tone. This short story relates to feminist perspectives. The mother expects a great deal from her daughter to have a certain potential and she does not hesitate to let her daughter understand that. As a matter of fact, the story is about two pages long, made into one long sentence - almost the whole time the mother is giving her daughter directions to follow - conveys a message to the reader that the mother demands and expects great potential in her daughter. The daughter is forced to listen and learn from what her mother is telling her to do to become the perfect housewife. Throughout the story, Kincaid uses the symbols of the house and clothing, benna and food to represent the meanings of becoming a young girl to a woman and being treated like one in society. Women are portrayed to appeal to a man to become the ideal woman in society, while men can do anything they please.

The narrative voice is intriguing when choosing a literacy technique when applied to Alice Munro 's “Boys and Girls” and Jamaica Kincaid 's “Girl” because it highlights the significance of women 's role during the 1960 's. The story of Boys and Girls is in third person narration describing an eleven- year old girl. This story was published in 1968, a time when the second wave of feminism movement occurred. This story gives information about adult gender roles. The setting of the story is in Canada during the winter. The narrator is living in a fox- breeding farm which correlates to the North American culture in the 1960 's. In the 1960 's, women were stereotyped as happy wives and mothers. In contrast, the society believed that unmarried

“Boys and Girls” is a short story, by Alice Munro, which illustrates a tremendous growing period into womanhood, for a young girl living on a fox farm in Canada, post World War II. The young girl slowly comes to discover her ability to control her destiny and her influences on the world. The events that took place over the course of the story helped in many ways to shape her future. From these events one can map the Protagonist’s future. The events that were drawn within the story provided the Protagonist with a foundation to become an admirable woman.

The girl distrusts her mother and believes her to be out of touch, while helping her father in "his real work" (468). Surprisingly, the girl's desire to avoid the manifestation of her femininity in womanly tasks, such as cooking and cleaning, influences her into feeling that her mother is "plotting now to get [her] to stay in the house [. . ]. and keep [her] from working for [her] father" (469). The girl chooses to dismiss her mother, thereby dismissing her own future role as a housewife.

Comparing Female Sexuality in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women

puberty bring with it a complex tradition of restrictions and behavioral guidelines. Kincaid’s poem reveals the rigidity and complexity of the social confines the girl is expected to operate underl. A girl is an induction into the women community as well as an orientation into the act of womanhood (Walkerdine et. al.). The lectured instructions given to the silent girl child vary from the housekeeping, “this is how you sweep a whole house”, to dealing with intimate relationships, “this is how a man bullies you; …how to bully a man” to medicine, “this is how to make good medicine (to abort)” (Kincaid).The inane patriarchal society expects gender stereotypes to prevail. The mother is tasked to give her daughter instructions on how to be a good woman in the stereotyped society. The advice the mother gives to the daughter cements the gender stereotype and portrays limitations on a woman (Bailey and Carol 107).

She is so naïve and adolescent that she leaves her worldly activities and gets ready to go out and spend time with her boyfriend. She gives him her possessions: her “labor” and “leisure” too (l. 7) for his politeness.

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

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