The Diverse Effects Of Societal Standards In Boys And Girls By Alice Munro

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.

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.

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

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.

Every individual struggle with self-acceptance at some point in their life, furthermore, every individual chooses to exemplify their struggle to accept themselves in different methods. In the short story “Boys and Girls” Alice Munro focuses on the narration of a girl, in which girls are underappreciated in the society. The protagonist in the story cannot accept who she is, and it makes it harder for her as other individuals do not accept who she wishes to be. The author demonstrates this through the character’s external motivations. As the story is written in third person limited readers understand the girl’s personal thoughts and how she is internally conflicted about who she is. She feels underappreciated for the work that she provides which influences her to be disobedient to others around her. Alice Munroe’s short story “Boys and Girls” demonstrates to readers that individuals struggle for self-acceptance through the expression of their external and internal motivations. Because of their motivations, individuals feel rebellious against their self-conscience.

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

“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.

There was a time when society did not consider men and women as equal. Men were considered as the superior human being and the dominant figures of authority in the house while the woman had to be a subservient. Alice Munro uses some interesting details in “Boys and Girls” to hold the readers captive. She takes us on a journey in an era where the male child was deemed more important than the female child. “Boys and Girls is a story about a girl’s struggle in accepting the role society has forced upon her in such a vivid manner that it draws the reader to want to know what happens next. In “Telling Tails,” by Tim O’Brien, he illustrates what a good story should be by using story examples. O’Brien believes that “Boys and Girls” is good story because the author uses a well-imagined plot, striking and dramatic elements, and the ability to reach deep into the heart of readers.

These roles control structural identity concepts from external self image, to the factors of quality of life. The girl from Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” demonstrates the difference in identity from early youth, when gender roles have little control over choices, to when she fully embraces the ‘women role’. She demonstrates a lack of knowledge of the roles when describing her stories as being, “... about myself, when I had grown a little older;they took place in a world that was recognizably mine, yet one that presented opportunities for courage, boldness and self-sacrifice, as mine never did.” The character identified herself as capable of heroism, and strength, even as far as mentioning “...teachers [cowering] behind my back… [as] I shot two rabid wolves who were menacing the schoolyard…” Gender roles dictate that girls should aim to be ‘damsels in distress’, destined to be household upkeepers.

In Lives of Girls and Women, people grow out of reading. As the protagonist Del says, reading “persisted mostly in unmarried ladies, would have been shameful in a man” (Munro, 117). As in The Bell Jar, women in Lives of Girls and Women who are educated and who are professionals are seen as masculine and immature. Mature and marriageable women learn to use make-up and to flaunt their physical beauty. Del overturns this rule by memorizing poetry and doing well academically. Both Esther and Del feel that academic achievements best define and express their sexuality, though not necessarily enhancing their sexual lives. While the bored, rich girls in The Bell Jar spend most of their time painting their nails and getting a tan, Esther feels out of place among the idle and the fashion-conscious. Her friend Doreen admits that at her college, all the girls “had pocket-book covers made out of the same material as their dresses”(Plath, 5). The night that Doreen returns drunken from the apartment of a stranger named Lenny, Esther closes her door on her friend but does not have the heart to lock it. Thus, Esther successfully shuts out the false societal values of female sexuality for a while, but acknowledges that her form of sexuality must co-exist with that of Doreen and of other females in her society.

In “Boys and Girls”, Alice try to broken the female gender stereotype in her family because she has an opposite view with the traditional thinking. We can clearly see that in paragraph 18, “She was plotting how to get me to stay in the house more, although she knew I hated it and keep me from working for my father.” This shows Alice disagree with her mother’s mind even everyone think women should stay at home, she still try to be herself. Alice’s thinking as same as the author’s thinking in the other essay. The passage 8 said that, “But only 16% of corporate officers are women, only 11.7% of fortune 500 company directors are female and only eight corporations have female CEOs.”

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