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

The narrator says, “ She was plotting now to get me to stay in the house more, although she knew I hated it and keep me from working for my father.(pg. 307) This statement is describing how important these roles were to the manipulative parental figures in her life. The father did not believe in the stereotypical women roles, which lead to him making her a hired man. During the winter, the family keeps and kills two horses to feed the foxes with horse meat. The name of the horses was Mack and Flora, which were a single female and male horse. Mack was the male horse who was characterized as a old black workhouse, sooty, and indifferent. (pg. 308) This statement describes how the stereotypical male in society should be like in the 1960 's. The male should have the characteristics of workhorse in the field of working in the 1960 's. Flora was a female who was characterized as an sorrel mare, a driver.(pg. 308) This statement describes how dominant she was a female horse. In contrast, the female women was not the dominant gender in the 1960 's , because of the limitations and lack of opportunities created by the predominantly gender of males. The narrator says, “ the word girl had formerly seemed to me

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

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.

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.

Neither child has an interest in the work of their parent of the same gender; Laird runs off to play instead of helping with the foxes, and the narrator escapes from the kitchen the first chance she gets (Munro 495). Later in the story, however, Laird begins to take an interest in the men’s work of hunting and killing the horse, and the narrator, while not yet embracing the work of her mother, is disengaging herself from her father’s work and turning toward the more feminine work of decorating her room. Neither of them sing songs anymore, even though the narrator continued to enjoy it, Laird said it “sounded silly,” so she stopped (Munro 501); this is an example of both Laird becoming more masculine, because he no longer wants to take part in frivolous things such as singing “Jingle Bells” at night, and the narrator becoming more feminine, because she so easily bows to her brother’s opinion. Laird has started to accept the role of “leader” instead of just being “young and obedient,” (Munro 499) and the narrator is taking other people’s opinions into consideration when deciding her actions, instead of just doing whatever she wants to do.

With every sentence that Kincaid wrote she created an image in the reader’s mind, she also kept constructing the character by starting with simple sentences like “Wash the white clothes on Monday” (Kincaid 1) and wrapping it up by saying, “After all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?” (Kincaid 42-43). By the last sentence the reader has their own appearance of who girl is and what her life is like as a grown woman, that has been given all of this advice. Kincaid wrote with a method that allowed the reader to imagine the parts that they wanted too, such as ethnicity, age, time period or in more detail, who is telling her this advice and what are their intentions? This short story was humble and complex at the same time. Her sentence

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.”

No matter the attempt, an individual will fail to live up to their own definition of themselves. When a society put a title on an individual and expect them to act a certain way, the individual will eventually follow the expectations no matter how hard he or she tries to outrun it. The short story “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro, shows a girl living in a society that is dominated by men. Women are expected to act a certain way and follow the man of the house. The narrator of the story tried to live the way she wanted and not let what people expect of her to affect her.

One day during the summer, Grace invites her boyfriend Royce to her family’s farm. They spend time together and plan to have sex together for the first time. The narrator describes the roles of each member of the family during a particular day and it clearly distinguishes the roles of the men from the women. The role of Grace and her boyfriend one of the days was to make strawberry jam, but soon after they changed. On the day that Grace and Royce had planned to have sex, the mother had to take the children to a doctor’s appointment, the father and brother, were going to work one of the the other lands that they had across the highway and Royce was in charge of slightly remodeling the tall brick house (Munro 10).

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. For example, the mother “did not often come out of the house unless it was to do something – hang out the wash or dig potatoes in the garden.” (43) indicating that her sole purpose was to be inside the home. However, although women are expected to be weak and silenced, the protagonist opposes herself to society’s expectations. While most girls are expected to help their mother in the kitchen and stay inside, the protagonist prefers to “help my father when he cut the long grass, and the lamb’s quarter and flowering money-musk, that grew between the pens. He cut with the scythe and I raked into piles.” (43) Due to the protagonist preferring to work outside with her father it makes her mother feel as though, “It’s not like I (she) had a girl in the family at all.” (44) which is evidence that the protagonist defies gender conventions by participating in male-oriented tasks. Munro expresses the protagonist’s unconventionality through the use of symbolism in Flora the horse. Flora is viewed as, “given to fits of violent alarm, veering at cars and even at other horses, but we loved her speed and high-stepping, her general air of gallantry and abandon.” (44) Whereas, the other horse Mack, is described at “slow and easy to handle” (44) The inclusion of the comparison amongst Mack and Flora is to show the reader that Flora’s wild and brave personality is not common and is seen as unconventional which represents the protagonist and her separation from the norm.

“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.

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.

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

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.

Society tries to place many rules upon an individual as 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 pressure of society to conform really is, as it overcomes and replaces the girl’s self image.