Since the beginning of time, gender roles have existed in society. Women were assigned the tasks of child-care and food preparation. Men performed most activities that required physical strength. As society progressed, the role of women did not. Although less emphasis is placed on gender roles today, gender roles still exist. In 1968, Alice Munro wrote, “Boys and Girls” to address the confusion that gender roles may cause in a modern society.
“Boys and Girls” is a coming-of-age story about a young girl who is enjoying her tomboy years and is defiant about becoming a woman. The theme in “Boys and Girls” is this transition from the childhood tomboy into the mature woman. The girl is unsure about whether she wants to be a woman or not, because she enjoys her father’s work and wants to be a part of it. On page 113, the girl expresses her feeling of disgust, “she (the mother) was plotting now to get me to stay in the house more, although she knew I hated it (because she knew I hated it) and keep me from working for my father.” The girl does not want to participate in womanly chores in the house; she wants to work outside with her father. The whole story is centered around gender roles of women and the girl must face and accept that her role is not outside with the pelting operation. The girl, who is the main character, describes her father¹s pelting operation in much detail showing her interest and knowledge of it. On page 109 and the top of page 110, line eight, she describes what is meant by pelting operation by explaining, “that was what the killing, skinning, and preparation of the furs was called.” She likes her father’s work so much that she concerns herself with k…
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…Munro’s story “Boys and Girls,” gender is a key element. Although the theme is the girl changing to the woman she had to become, it ultimately shows the limitations placed on women. It seems that, really, not much has changed for women since hunting and gathering days and the Enlightenment. Women are still associated with certain ways they must act and tasks they must perform.
Works Cited and Consulted
Carscallen, James. The Other Country: Patterns in the Writing of Alice Munro. Toronto: ecw 1993
Heble, Ajay. The Tumble of Reason: Alice Munro’s Discourse of Absence. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1994
Munro, Alice. “Boys and Girls.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Eds. Carl E. Bain, Jerome Beaty and J. Paul Hunter. 6th ed. New York: Norton, 1995.
Martin, W.R. Alice Munro: Paradox and Parallel. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press 1987
The Struggle for Self-Definition in Boys and Girls by Alice Munro
The Struggle for Self-Definition in Boys and Girls
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 heart. Although the transformation is not complete, she begins to understand and define her “self-hood.”
Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” immerses us into the rural country-side of Jubilee, Ontario, Canada, and into the life of an eleven year-old tom-boy. The story unfolds how she struggles to become herself while growing up on her parents’ farm. Her father raises silver foxes for the family’s meager source of income as her mother cares for their home. Let us first look at the world she is enthralled with at the start of her narrative.
Initially, Father is her world. As she helps him care for the foxes, she does not call him Daddy; she calls him Father. The name Father commands respect and formality. Munro writes, “. . . I was shy of him and would never ask him questions. Nevertheless I worked willing under his eyes, and with a feeling of pride” (112). Although eager and happy to spend time with her father, Munro reveals here that she does not have a close relationship with her fath…
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…earning from her mother, she will define herself as well. Indeed, it is not easy growing up. It is painfully hard to defy the person that you most admire, in this case her father. But at some point in our young lives we must break free from the conformity of our parents’ world in order to give birth to our “self.” This is what Alice Munro shows us through “Boys and Girls.”
Works Cited and Consulted
Carscallen, James. The Other Country: Patterns in the Writing of Alice Munro. Toronto: ecw 1993
Heble, Ajay. The Tumble of Reason: Alice Munro’s Discourse of Absence. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1994
Munro, Alice. “Boys and Girls.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Eds. Carl E. Bain, Jerome Beaty and J. Paul Hunter. 6th ed. New York: Norton, 1995.
Martin, W.R. Alice Munro: Paradox and Parallel. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press 1987