Gender Roles In 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.

Throughout the history of society, women and men both have faced the constricting roles forced upon them, from a young age; each gender is given specific social and cultural roles to play out throughout their lives. Little girls are given dolls and kitchen toys, little boys are given dinosaurs and power tool toys, if one was to step out of this specified role, social conflict would ensue. Contrast to popular belief, sex is a biological construct, and gender is a social construct specifying the roles men and women are to follow to be accepted into society as “normal”. The effects of gender roles have had on women have proved harmful over the decades. Although the woman’s involvement in society has improved throughout the decades,

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.”

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.

At the beginning of this same line, the girl tells what she does not like, "It seemed to me that work in the house was endless, dreary and peculiarly depressing."  She sees her mother's life and the work that she does and simply does not want to be a part of it.  She also outright says, "I hated the hot dark kitchen in summer; the green blinds and the flypapers, the same old oil table and wavy mirror and bumpy linoleum" (113).  The girl is showing her opposition to her assigned gender role.  She does not like working in the house or preparing comparing and contrasting of the father's world versus the mother's world.  The father's world is composed of outdoor work, fox farming, has no emotion, expresses freedom and identified by light.  The father's world is all about the death of animals.  So, there is no time for emotions.  This lack of emotions is also carried into the relationship between the girl and her father.  The girl says, My father did not talk to me unless it was about the job we were doing.  Whatever thoughts and stories my father had were private, and I was shy of him and would never ask him questions" (112).  The girl accepted this and considered it part of the attitude you have to have for this job.  The girl prefers her father's type of emotion rather than her mother's.  The girl describes her mother's emotions:

Outside forces do not have any long-lasting influence on how someone perceives themself. This is a notion that some individuals may choose to believe. However, through the events of one story, we come to realize that the prior statement is false. The nameless protagonist of Boys and Girls (1964) showed that as people, we can be created as somebody other than ourselves at our core because we fall back on the opinions of people whose views we regard too highly. Canadian author Alice Munro’s short story displays how an individual’s identity and realization of self is molded by the prominent role adversity plays throughout the course of their life because the contrasting values and ideologies of those around them conflict with their own moral compass.

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

It is important to teach children about gender roles since it is something that society holds in regards, but most of the time in literature it is done unequally. The portrayal of gender in literature is based off of the expectations of society and places bias on gender. Boys are portrayed as strong, adventurous, independent and capable and often play the roles of fighters, adventurers and rescuers. Girls are portrayed as sweet, naïve, dependent, sensitive and emotional and play roles such as caretakers, princesses and mothers. The roles of gender portrayed in literature are often a reflection of the views of society and do not offer objective insight. Even though it is important to teach children about gender roles, the fashion in which it is done in does not allow children to see beyond those expectations. If a young girl is constantly read stories about a woman’s role as a housewife, homemaker and mother, she will assume that’s what is expected of her and will not know society will allow her to be anything she wants to be.

“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.

At first, the narrator disagrees with how her family expects her to be. Specifically, her mother expectations, as she is the most direct stating “I just get my back turned and she runs off. It’s not like I had a girl in the family at all.” The narrator instead of working with her mother inside their house prefers to work out doors in her father’s fox farm.

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.

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

Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” features a young female narrator who lives on her family's fox farm. For years the young girl has been helping out around the farm which was out of the ordinary at the time. Women were expected to work inside completing house work while the men worked outside doing yard work. The young girl has acted like the boys her entire life however she is being pressured to change.

Societal expectations are not an external conflict that the girl is faced with; at this time, she doesn’t need courage to fight. She finds her integrity by working on her father’s farm. She expresses her lack of awareness to society by continuing working on the farm out of pride and enjoyment for the tasks. She is not pressured into doing the work on the farm but finds enjoyment and comfort in it. Comparing herself to her brother, Laird, she is proud of being more useful to her father because “ [she] had the real watering can, my [her] father’s”. With the emphasis of the “real water can”, it symbolizes her ability to do most of her work that was assigned to her. Society is represented by the salesman because he sees her as “only a girl”. In spite of this she remains blissfully unaware and continues to do what she loves. With the lack of knowledge of how she is perceived courage is unnecessary to pursue her integrity.