The Struggle For Self Occeptance In Boys And Girls By Alice Munro

Fitting in is always an issue in the world of teenage girls and some girls have better outcomes than others. “Snow White” by Grace Hu is a story about a teenage girl named Mary who is an albino. Mary struggles to be accepted because of her scary white exterior. Also she has low self confidence from being teased by her peers. Mary also only has one true friend that begins to drift apart from her. Another story that deals with the issue of acceptance is the story “Red Dress”. “Red Dress” by Alice Munro is a story about a teenage girl entering her first year of high school. She fights to be accepted and decides to go to the school dance with her one friend Lonnie, despite her terrible clothes put together by her crazy

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.

After reading “A&P” by John Updike and Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls”, a centralized theme arose. Each story’s protagonist demonstrates a unique internal struggle centered on the restrictions society places upon them. Even though the short stories written by John Updike and Alice Munro are remarkably different from each other, it is possible for a reader to interpret similarities between the two.

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

What does it mean to be a woman or man? Whether we a man or a woman, in today’s society it is not determined just by our sex organs. Our gender includes a complex mix of beliefs, behaviors, and characteristics. How do you act, talk, and behave like a woman or man? Are you feminine or masculine, both, or neither? These are questions that help us get to the core of our gender and gender identity. Gender identity is how we feel about and express our gender and gender roles: clothing, behavior, and personal appearance. It is a feeling that we have as early as age two or three. In the article, “Becoming Members of Society: Learning the Social Meaning of Gender,” the author, Aaron Devor, is trying to persuade his readers that gender shapes how we behave because of the expectation from us and relate to one another. He does this by using an educational approach, describing gender stereotypes, and making cultural references. He gets readers to reflect on how “Children’s developing concepts of themselves as individuals are necessarily bound up …to understand the expectations of the society which they are a part of” (389). Growing up, from being a child to an adult is where most of us try to find ourselves. We tend to struggle during this transition period, people around us tell us what to be and not to be, Jamaica Kincaidt in her short story, “Girl” tells just that, the setting is presented as a set of life instructions to a girl by her mother to live properly. The mother soberly

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, the main character feels constantly restrained and restricted to what other people believe should be the way for things to be conducted, and in turn, how females should conduct themselves. In various ways, the girl attempts to free herself from these limitations that have been set by others, that creates her core identity, in order to pursue a version of herself that she believes truly represents her. Firstly, she often disobeys her mother so that she can have the opportunity to work for her father instead, “As soon as I was done, I ran out of the house, trying to get out of earshot before my mother thought of what she wanted me to do next” (p. 194). She exhibits behavior that indicates that she does not want any part of the draining, dreary housework that contains her inside a world that does not excite her - that is not “ritualistically important” to her. Secondly, at night she often dreams of other worlds - other situations that are not real and will never become reality, “...took place in a world that was recognizably mine, yet one that presented opportunities for courage, boldness, and self-sacrifice, as mine never did” (p. 191), because her dreams allow her the freedom during sleep to be the person she wants to be, and not who people need her to be. She can be brave, and be the hero, in contrast to how she goes about her day-to-day life - without enjoyment when she feels

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.

In finding personal integrity, courage is a double edged blade as it can sustain integrity in certain circumstances and drive an individual further away in others. In Alice Munro’s short story “Boys and Girls” the main character begins by developing a sense of personal integrity without external influence, but soon loses sight of herself as pressure from both herself and her society outpace her aspirations. As she grows older the values she placed in feats of daring is interchanged with misplaced rebellion as she attempts to fight her expectations and role in her family. Though she has courage in abundance for an untested child, the constant reproach and patronizing attitude of the people around her restricts her ability to flourish. In this text Munro suggests that well-employed courage is needed to sustain an already developed integrity, though it must act with some source of external support to succeed.

For centuries, women have had the role of being the perfect and typical house wife; needs to stay home and watch the children, cook for husbands, tend to the laundry and chores around the house. In her short story “Girl”, Jamaica Kincaid provides a long one sentence short story about a mother giving specific instructions to her daughter but with one question towards the end, with the daughter’s mother telling her daughter if she had done all the instructions to become a so called “perfect” woman, every man would want her. Kincaid’s structuring in “Girl,” captures a demanding and commanding tone. This short story relates to feminist perspectives. The mother expects a great deal from her daughter to have a certain potential and she does not hesitate to let her daughter understand that. As a matter of fact, the story is about two pages long, made into one long sentence - almost the whole time the mother is giving her daughter directions to follow - conveys a message to the reader that the mother demands and expects great potential in her daughter. The daughter is forced to listen and learn from what her mother is telling her to do to become the perfect housewife. Throughout the story, Kincaid uses the symbols of the house and clothing, benna and food to represent the meanings of becoming a young girl to a woman and being treated like one in society. Women are portrayed to appeal to a man to become the ideal woman in society, while men can do anything they please.

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.

Beginning with Burts' piece On Growing up between Genders, I felt very saddened by the immediate wanting of approval they seemed to crave so desperately from the world. This feeling of so badly wanting to be accepted by others is something very familiar to myself, and a topic that is so current in our world today, as I can speak for