Gender Roles in Alice Munro’s "Boys and Girls" and Bobbie Ann Mason’s "Shiloh"

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

The more masculine Norma Jean becomes, the more she leaves her husband behind. Norma Jean is independent and unable to cope with her husband’s constant presence. Norma Jean is a good wife when her husband comes home from work, but, now that he is always home she has become a different person. Norma Jean was able to put on an illusion of being a great wife because she only had to do it for a short while. She is very content with being alone and not being bound to her husband, “Norma Jean has never complained about his travelling; she has never made hurt remarks, like calling his truck a ‘widow maker’” (Mason 570). Norma Jean does not complain about her husband being gone because she prefers it over the latter. Norma Jean even rejects her wifely duties, “When [Mabel] visits, she inspects the closets and then the plants, informing Norma Jean when a plant is droopy…She also notices if Norma Jean’s laundry is piling up” (Mason 572). This quote symbolizes Norma Jean’s unwillingness to fall into a permanent role as a wife. She neglects her womanly duties and it is her mother that tells her when it’s time to do things. Now that Leroy is home, Norma Jeans starts extracurricular activities to not be with her husband, “Something is happening. Norma Jean is going to night school…now she is taking an adult-education course in composition at Paducah Community College. She spends her evenings

Historically, gender roles determined one’s course of life. Learning from generations past and how a person is raised, teaches one what is expected of them in the future. In Alice Munro’s short story “Boys and Girls”, the expectations of each gender determines the narrator’s role in society and who she becomes. This story is set in the mid twentieth century, a time where men and women were seen as having different purposes in life (Jade Mazarin). Throughout the story, it is portrayed that men were expected to be emotionally and physically strong and work hard outside of the house. On the other hand, women were expected to work hard in the house, completing household chores such as cooking and cleaning. In this story, the narrator takes us

Gender Roles Suck Gender roles have been a subject of great debate in recent history due to the expanding need for equality and belonging in an ever expanding and evolving society. From the analysis of “Practicing” and “The Yellow Wallpaper”, it is clear to me that gender roles are very harmful to our current society because it forces people to choose and think in a particular way in order to avoid the stigma of not measuring up. The distinguishing difference between “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Practicing” is that both characters have different perspectives as well as different approaches as to how they should make their decisions. The wife in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is reactionary and afraid of disapproval from her husband, friends, and family while the girls in “Practicing” are aware of potential disapproval but decide to go with what feels right to them in the moment.

In Alice Munro’s short story “Boys and Girls” there are contrasts of how the narrator and the society she lives in view the genders. The social construct of gender defines what the narrator is able to do and she learns what it means to be a female in her society. She transitions from resisting the expectations of her gender to consciously becoming more feminine, and then dejectedly accepting her gender and what it means to be female. The social construct of gender only serves to limit what a person is able to do with their life. It creates unnecessary restrictions in their own identity, as well as restrictions in what others believe they are capable of.

Restrictive Gender Roles: The play unveils the unfair imbalance of power between men and women both inside and outside of the household.

As I grew up, I always thought women and men were two very different types of humans. Two very similar species on planet earth, but in some ways, we were exactly the same. The poem “What’s That Smell In The Kitchen?” by Marge Piercy really got me thinking about the roles society “assigns” to both men and women. During my elementary school ages, I would always come home to my mother cooking dinner, while my father got home from a long day at work. It was embeded in my brain that women were born to be housekeepers, while men were born to work. But is this fair? “What’s That Smell In The Kitchen?” points out, to both men and women, that women will become angry and mad because of the roles men are expecting

One of the examples from this book that disturbed me the most was “Boys invent things. Girls use the things boys invent.” These two pages of the book alone showed the sexism of the author. The author was implying that boys are handymen and are capable of using their mind to invent things. He also is implying that girls are not as smart as boys or incapable of inventing anything for themselves because they are ‘girls.’ The author went on to point out jobs that a boy or girl can have. Examples of this include “Boys as doctors. Girls are nurses.” “Boys are policemen. Girls are meter maids.” “Boys build houses. Girls keep houses.” While expressing what boys and what girls are expected to grow up to be this teaches the readers that boys and girls are not equal. They are not allowed to be what they want to be, but what their gender is expected to become based on society’s

In the short story “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro, is embedded a true life story of not just how specific genders are supposed to live out specific roles, but how both genders have to live life in a way that gets them both through it, we all have to go through this life the best way we've learned to live. In her short story, there are three main elements that stick out as important to me. These being the characters, the theme, and the setting Munro uses. The characters in this story are fairly round characters that have a lot of impact on the thoughts and actions of each other, with the exception of Henry who is the farmhand and more of a side, flat character. The characters include the narrator who is the protagonist, an unnamed young girl, Laird, the young girl's’ little brother,

Life is a complex story that all of humanity experiences in astonishingly contrasting ways. One distinguishable difference between people is class. Some are born with nothing, while others grow in prosperity. Those with little have limited opportunities and usually endeavor for an improved life by working strenuous jobs with low pay. Another difference is gender. Throughout one’s existence, dissimilarities are obvious between gender groups. Media, pop-culture, and other’s general behavior provide notions that assist in determining who is what. In Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (2014) Olivia is a single mother striving to support both herself and her two children Mason and Samantha all while attempting to properly raise the two and attend college.

Mathew Henry, a non-conformist clergyman, once said, “The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.” The short story Boys and Girls written by Alice Munro is a story telling about how women were treated in the 1960s. The story depicts a life of a young girl who is beginning to be expected to act like a typical young lady, but refuses to give in to the close-minded culture. The girl begins to see how differently her brother, Laird, and she are being treated by their mother, father, and grandmother. The theme of the story could be interpreted in many different ways.

People are shaped by the external forces that act upon them. They can choose whether or not to accept the pressure and conform to them or they can reject it altogether, further reinforcing their original traits. Sometimes these external forces are too substantial for the individual to handle and they have no choice but to conform and submit to these forces. In the short story “Boys and Girls”, written by Alice Munro the protagonist begins to discover that society plays an important role in the shaping of a one's character and personality. In her childhood, the protagonist exhibits a very unorthodox nature as she prefers to do manual labour alongside her father rather than residing in her house doing more domestic tasks. As the protagonist

The role of gender is a main point of many pieces of literature. One of those story’s is “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro. This is a story of a girl who is in conflict between the role she wants to fill and the role that her gender prescribes to her. She would like to help her father in the business of raising foxes for their pelts, which is work normally ascribed to a man. This conflict causes her mother to disagree with the girl’s want to help her father. The mother is inclined to push for her daughter to help her with jobs in the house while her brother takes on a bigger role with helping their father. The initiation story in Munro’s “Boys and Girls” telling of a girl fighting gender roles emphasizes the conflict between social standards and individual freedom by allowing for freewill to flow through punishment and into conformity.

Growing up on a farm teaches many life lessons that continue on throughout life. The roles, duties, and expectations guide everyday life and allow for a work ethic later on in life. However, sometimes it is best to challenge reality and the expectations a person has to endure because of their gender. In Alice Munro’s story “ Boys and Girls”, the main character has to learn about the harshness of the world not from the death of farm animals but the expectations of her gender and the roles she will have to partake later in life even though she does not want to. Her family and the Setting are the primary factors in this because they are what allow her to discover the message while challenging her from achieving her own