Social Pressures in Willa Cather's Pauls Case and Alice Munro's Boys and Girls

Ambition—the desire to achieve, will to succeed. Every character is defined by his dreams, his goals, and his passions. As individuals, we are confronted with social codes and implications that cause us to revolt and break free from the grasp of uniformity. Oftentimes dreams and ambitions clash with the unwritten laws of civilization. In Willa Cather’s short fiction “Paul’s Case” and Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls”, the protagonists challenge expectations and rebel against settings governed by uniformity and gender-specific roles. Paul rejects conformity and the uniformity of Cordelia Street, while the girl resists the gender roles placed upon her by her mother. Despite being placed in two very similar situations, both characters come to learn two exceptionally different lessons concerning social pressures and expectations in society. The girl concludes that society’s expectations concerning gender code and behaviors are undeniably reasonable, whereas Paul, until his death, resists the pressures placed upon him by his surrounding community.

In “Boys and Girls”, the protagonist, a young girl, is caught between her desire to live in a male-oriented world and her mother’s protests to play her part as a female in the family. The girl resists female chores such as cleaning and preparing meals. Finding them “endless” and “depressing”, favoring work done “out of doors” with her father, “ritualistically important”. However, her effort to neglect this gender role does not go without struggle. She listens relentlessly to her mother, claiming “it’s not like I had a girl in the family at all.” The word “girl” becomes a burdening reminder of not who she is, but what the girl is expected and pressured “to become”. With her grandmother’s reminde...

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... mechanism” to cope with his everyday pressures. Unlike the girl in “Boys and Girls”, Paul never did accept society’s idea of an educated, school-orientated adolescent. Rather, the lesson he learns is that he could have compromised, dealing with social pressures imposed upon him by simply “losing himself” and imagining a world of his own.

Evidently, through social settings of uniformity, conformism, and gender codes, the protagonists of “Paul’s Case” and “Boys and Girls” experience many difficult demands imposed by society and learn several life long lessons. These stories demonstrate efforts to break free from the grasp of uniformity when faced and confronted with social codes and implications. The lessons concerning compromised dreams and ambitions are relevant in today’s settings, and reveal truths about social patterns and their effects on everyday individuals.