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.
The father in the story was a fox farmer. He raised foxes and would skin them and sold their pelts for to provide for the family. While growing up, she sought for attention from her father and began to enjoy working with her father with the foxes. Even though her father did not talk to her unless it was about the job they were doing she still enjoy the time spent with her
Boys and Girls, written by Alice Munro in 1931, is a short story that discusses the journey of a girl who transcends the concept of gender roles in her youth by believing herself to be characterized by not her gender, but instead her interests, capabilities, and responsibilities in regard to her support in running her father’s fox farming business at home. Throughout the story, the nameless narrator supplies the reader with a multitude of details that explain and explore the social constraints of
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 main character’s mother believes that the girl is best fit in the kitchen aiding her
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
they were dressed in frilly clothes, given dolls and make-up kits, told to take care of their appearance and be polite and agreeable.” (Gender) The same theory can be found in Alice Munro’s story, “Boys and Girls”, which is about a young girl’s defiance against society’s version of womanhood. In “Boys and Girls,” Alice Munro emphasizes the irrationality of gender roles that are established by society, and the severe and harmful impact it can have on children. She does this by emphasizing the conformity
society's ideas of how gender roles should be, as well as threats of a feminist influence on some issues are found in "Boys and Girls" composition written by Alice Munro. In this story, the main character, who appears to be an unnamed girl, faces her awakening body and the challenge of developing her social identity in a man's world. Through first-person narration, Munro shows the girl's views of femininity by describing the girl's interpretations of her parents shaped by indoor and outdoor territoriality
“Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro is a story that depicts the change of an unidentified female character. As the story progresses, she slowly lets her emotions guide her towards becoming an empathetic as well as an aware person which are considered weaknesses by the men in her family. The unnamed girl becomes empathetic and tender-hearted towards the animal cruelty taking place on the farm. For the first time, instead of obeying her father and “shutting the gate, [she] opened it as wide as [she] could”
to what is acceptable and what is not . One must decide for themselves whether to give in to these pressures and conform to society’s projected image, or rather to resist and maintain their own desired self image. In the story “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro, Munro suggests that this conflict is internal and external and a persons experiences in life will determine which of these forces will conquer. In terms of the unnamed protagonist’s experiences in the story, it becomes clear just how strong the
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
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 Alice Munro’s short story, Boys and Girls, the underlying theme displayed throughout the entirety of the story is conforming and defying to society’s gender expectations. This is shown through the literary device, symbolism. Symbolism is seen through Flora the horse and the protagonist’s mother.
Firstly, Munro displays society’s weak and stereotypical view of women through the protagonist’s mother. The mother acts exactly as society expects girls to, staying inside the house, cooking and cleaning