Essay Gender Roles in Alice Munro’s Boys and Girls

Society has told us for the last hundreds of years that the woman’s job around the house as shown in Figure 1 is to cook, clean, and take care of the family. One man, Tom Junod, who

Many conflicts arise in a relationship due to the difference of opinion between people. Society customs and rules also plays an important role in a relationship. The two short stories “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro and “Responsibility” by Russell Smith show how arguments and challenges are faced by characters in their relationships due to differences in their thinking and way of living. It is very important for an indiviudal to follow norms of the society to occupy a proper status and be accepted by the society. Both of the main the characters in each story have their own dreams and wishes but finally have to compromise with the rules of society.

“Boys and Girls,” a short story by Alice Munro, tells the coming-of-age story of a young girl who wants to live a somewhat traditionally “masculine” life on her family's farm. As the story quickly progresses, societal roles pushed on the girl by her parents and brother attempt to make the girl fit into a more “feminine” role. While the story lays out a seemingly superficial meaning of changes experienced while growing up, a closer look into the details brings out a story that exposes a view on the effects that society and the roles that people push onto others have on people; specifically, the story shows the negative effects of stereotypical gender roles that affect the narrator.

Throughout In Search of Authority, Bonnycastle illustrates the differences faced by men and women based on their gender. In the beginning, he discusses the various ways men and women appear different, even if it is unnoticeable, by explaining masculine and feminine qualities. He describes a masculine quality as being “assertive” whereas a feminine quality is “passive” (187). Furthermore, he states how there may be biological and cultural differences between the two sexes. From a biological standpoint, there are physical differences, but no studies show any correlation with male and female characteristics. From a cultural standpoint, boys and girls go through dissimilar processes. He describes how as an infant, a boy will change from his mom

Alice Munro developed the theme “Be yourself, and do not let others change that” in her short story, “Boys and Girls” with the use of characters and the setting. At the beginning, the narrator sees herself as a daddy’s girl who enjoys helping out on the farm, but as the story continues she is shaped into a character more like her mother. Together, Munro’s characters and the setting of the story influence the theme in a variety of ways.

   Recent history boldly notes the protests and political unrest surrounding the Vietnam Conflict during the 1960s and 70s. However, equally important in this era are the women who pushed for gender role reevaluation and publicly rebelled against the established social norm of a woman's "place." Although Alice Munro may not have been burning her bra on the courthouse steps, threads of a feminist influence can be found in "Boys and Girls." Munro's main character, a girl probably modeled after Munro's own childhood experiences on an Ontario farm, faces her awakening body and the challenge of developing her social identity in a man's world. "The girl," an unnamed character, acts as

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.”

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.

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

On the other hand, when both partners share the breadwinner role men are more likely to increase their core housework tasks in companion to men in the ‘new traditional’ and male-breadwinner families. Consequently, many studies found that gender attitudes are still primary indicators of who does housework, thus women still do two-thirds of housework where men do two-thirds of paid work. It is noticed that there have been significant changes for women over the last 6 decades to participate in the labour force, yet there was hardly any change to the division of core household work between men and women.

Gender roles and gender stereotyping have been around since the beginning of time, and although society has made great advances in trying to change these terms, they still exist. They shape our children and effect their outlooks on society. Gender roles and gender stereotyping play a huge role in the story, “Boys and Girls,” by Alice Murno. In this story, the preconceived notions of gender are played out through every character. Male and female roles portray society’s expectations of appropriate behavior, through the children, and parents. The narrator tries to rebel against her assigned gender role, but eventually conforms to the world, and becomes what they consider to be a real woman.

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 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.

her father tries to change who she is and force her into a gender role

Feminist theory has been around for many years restricting women on how they behave, dress and even what jobs they are ‘allow’ to do. In the short story, “Boys and Girls”, Alice Munro portrays a young girl who is socially and psychologically undermined by her family and the sociality to show her readers how feminist theory took a toll on girls back in 1964 and still happening till this day.