Simran Maan
The stereotype that society has established on the subject of the way males and females should behave is an important factor in the short story "Boys and Girls" by Alice Munro. Traditionally, men are taught to handle all of the jobs that require high amounts of physical strength. Women, on the other hand, are taught to do tasks that don't require much strength such as cook, clean and care for the family. This is society's stereotype. The main character in "Boys and Girls" is a young girl who has a unique perspective of the role of men and women in society. Alice Munro describes how one girl's unique individual perspective of not conforming within society undergoes a transformation because of the pressure that society exerts upon its individuals and undeniable inner human instincts.
Beforehand, this girl believed that she could simply assist her father with the type of work he did on the fox farm.
Flora Zabelle (LOC)
English: A young girl of the Bozo people along Nig...
English: Portrait of a Young GirlShe would much rather help her father, as opposed to her mother, because she enjoyed the work her father did. "[She] hated the hot dark kitchen ⦠the green blinds and the flypapers, the same old oilcloth table and the wavy mirror and the bumpy linoleum." She often "helped [her] father when he cut the long grass ⦠her father cut with the scythe and [she] raked into piles ⦠[she] worked willingly under his eyes, and with a feeling of pride." Her initial belief was that she did not have to help her mother, simply because she was a girl. She silently disagreed with her mother when she said "wait till Laird gets a little bigger, then you'll have a real help." The young girl didn't believe that Laird, her younger brother would ever be a real help around the...
Boys And Girls
Yes, this story does touch on the idea of gender roles. However, I feel that this writer mises a great deal of the meaning of the story in reading it only as a story about gender roles. The story tells a great deal about life in rural Canada, about the raising of foxes, and about growing up. To reduce it merely to a story about how a girl is eventually made to conform to some of the stereotypes of gender is to exclude much of the story.
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