Gender Roles In Boys And Girls By Alice Munro

Women today have unprecedented rights and opportunities. We can vote, get a job, be a boss, be a mother, and the list continues. The roles women once had have drastically changed; however, there is no doubt that today women still face inequality. The novel Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro is set in the small Ontario town of Jubilee in 1940s. The main character is a young woman named Del who narrates her upbringing. The novel expresses many feminist views, and the prominent characters are mostly female. The modern views of what a female is or the rights she should have are not yet established. The theme of the novel is the distorting effects that a women’s oppression has on their sexual identity and ideas of what sex is. The three most prominent examples in the text are Del’s mother’s abuse from her brother, Del’s experience with Mr. Chamberlain, and Del’s relationship with Garnet. Each of these relationships shows how the oppression they faced limited either Del or another female character,in her development and opportunities and tarnished or distorted her views on sexuality and how a woman should behave.

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 narrator, a young girl growing up on a fox farm who is coming of age and is thus forced to conform to societies expectations of women. Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Boyle argue that, “Literary texts call into question many of our essentialist ideas about gender” (183) and Munro’s story is an example of how literature can help us question the validity of gender essentialist thought. In this essay, I will argue that Munro’s short story does challenge common essentialist views on gender by exploring the way that society constructs and imposes gender roles on her characters, particularly the young narrator; and by analyzing the symbolic relationship between the narrator and the mare named Flora.

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.

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

Gender role is a concept that has existed in society since the beginning of civilization. Although women are said to have equal opportunity in modern society, the traditional view of gender still remain in present day America. This lingering notion left over from ancient society has become a problem especially in the twentieth century. The contemporary view of gender roles is highlighted in Alice Munro’s short story “Boys and Girls” as the narrator comes to realize gender role as unchangeable and unable to be affected by actions.

Throughout history, men and women have had certain roles and duties that are expected to be fulfilled. Alice Munro’s short story Boys and Girls illustrates the unfairness of these expectations that are given to both genders in the sense of how they are supposed to behave simply based upon their sex. The little girl narrates the story as one who is put down by her family for not wanting to participate in the activities girls were supposed to engage in, in accordance to the social norm. “A girl was not, as I had supposed, simply what I was; it was what I had to become” (Munro 149). This quote from Munro’s story demonstrates the sadness and confusion that the girl felt when she realized she was supposed was to supposed to be different.

“Sex seemed to me to all surrender—not the woman’s to the man but the person’s to the body, an act of pure faith, freedom in humility.”

The short story, Boys and Girls, a main character, a female narrator describes her period when her carefree childhood was coming to end and she struggled to comply with internal and external forces. Though this story the author, Alice Munro, demonstrates that there are specific roles of boys and girls, which are established by societal expectations. Even though we have to accept

Charlotte's Web, Anne of Green Gables, Treasure Island, Cinderella and Grimm's Brothers fairy tales, have all been treasures of society's basic children's literature. They covered their share of beauties, villains, conflicts and happy-endings that many of us remember till this day. But were we as society's children aware of the impact these stories made on our views of men and women? Although parents, teachers and other socializing agents communicate gender roles to children at an early age, the issue of how children's literature influences gender roles, stereotyping and sometimes sexism has been a topic on many educators, researchers and psychologists' agendas since as early as

In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls”, the story is focused on a working class family who lives on a farm. A man’s role on the farm or in general is to work for the family and do the heavy work that a woman wouldn’t be able to do. The daughter in the story is very much inspired by the father and wishes to pursue in the activities that are being performed around the farm. The mother needs help around the house and that was the role many females took over for many centuries and generations. Throughout the existence of society gender roles are often exchanged and unfairly distributed. The point of view Alice Munro wants to establish is that women are capable of doing a fair share of the things men can do.

In the short story “Boys and Girls”, Alice Munro suggested that the need of security can be contradictory to an individual’s desire of independence through the contrast between narrator’s interior thought of being an independent self-sacrificing hero in conflict with the others’ compulsion of being a dependent stereotype of girl. During the time of the story, frame of society is rigid, and there were no motions around the gender rules; therefore, women seems to be designated to live as housemaids in the, “endless, dreary and peculiarly depressing” kitchen while relay on men in the house for living expenses. The narrator however, has a different attitude toward the society. She found the word girl seemed, “innocent and unburdened like the word

Boys and Girls is an analysis of the development of gender roles and focuses on how a young girl was being forced into the female mold. The story, narrated by a young girl, details the time in her life when she leaves childhood and its freedoms behind and realizes that to be a "girl" is to be, eventually, a woman. She starts to grasp that becoming a "girl" fraught with difficulties because she senses that women are considered the social inferiors of men. She starts off with a strong sense of self and was naïve of gender stereotypes. However, over the course of the story, she loses her self-identity and gains a gender through emblematic interactions with characters. Alice Munro uses the secondary characters, such as her parents and the

In Boys and Girls, Alice Munro shows how the young girl in the story turns into an adult when she is pressured by her family and society to become a genteel woman instead of a little girl who works outdoors

“A gender-equal society would be the one where the word ‘gender’ does not exist; where everyone can be themselves” (Gloria Steinem). Gender-equality is a substantial problem that is everlasting within the society of today, and parental dominance is one of the key contributors in this never ending predicament. Parental dominance is a severe obstacle the protagonists have to overcome as their birth givers take countless amounts of steps to sway their children into the predetermined route at society creates for them. These characters within “Saturday Climbing” and “Boys and Girls” try their damndest to fight for justice and to secure what their hearts truly desire. Firstly peer pressure from their parental figures to partake in activities and society imposes on them leads to rebellion and poor life choices. As a result of the immense pressure placed upon both Moira and the Farmer’s daughter the ladies lash out and voice their disagreements both physically and verbally. On top of this, the placement of unnecessary aspirations upon adolescence within society can result in a whole world of problems. Forcing these children into having such aspirations can lead to negativity and doubt. Both Moira and the daughter of the farmer face the same predicament through their experiences. Ultimately these protagonists of “Saturday Climbing” and “Boys and Girls” Club to control of their own future in their path of destiny. They do not allow others to control what they should say or do.