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Boys and Girls (Alice Munro)
Boys and Girls (Alice Munro)
essay analysis on barbie doll by marge piercy
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The societal pressures faced by women is, arguably, the main topic of Alice Munro’s short story “Boys and Girls,” Mary Wollstonecraft’s essay “Introduction to A Vindication of the Rights of Women” and Marge Piercy’s poem “Barbie Doll.” “Boys and Girls” deals with those societal pressures faced by women within both the home and family life. Alternatively, “Introduction to A Vindication of the Rights of Women” and “Barbie Doll” deal with those societal pressures faced by women in society at large. All three show how societal pressures are acting against women, but “Introduction to A Vindication of the Rights of Women” and “Barbie Doll” go even further by showing the negative effects of these pressures.
In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” societal pressures are primarily exerted by the older women in a girl’s surroundings. Girls are pressured by their mothers and grandmothers into filling specific roles within both the family and around the house. The behaviour of girls, and in turn women, is the basis of such a pressure. The behaviour of the main character in “Boys and Girls” is often dictated by the older women around her. Her grandmother can often be heard saying things like: ‘“Girls [do not] slam doors”’ (497) and ‘“Girls keep their knees together when they sit”’ (497) reflecting the kind of control older women attempt to exert of the behaviour of younger women. In this society, a girl cannot ask questions because such things are ‘“none of a girl’s business”’ (497). The main character’s mother complains that ‘“[it is] not like I had a girl in the family at all,”’ (495), simply because the girl would rather spend her time helping her father with his work than helping her mother with the, in her opinion, “endless, dreary and pecul...
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...related. By all accounts, Mary Wollstonecraft should consider the main character in “Barbie Doll” to be a near perfect woman; she has all of the characteristics that Wollstonecraft believes women should have. And yet she throws it all away for what – to be pretty? Piercy’s “Barbie Doll” is the poetic expression of Wollstonecraft’s eighteenth century woman, revealing just how little has changed in the pressures faced by women in almost two hundred years.
Works Cited
Munro, Alice. “Boys and Girls.” Introduction to Literature 5th ed. Eds. Findlay et al. Toronto: Nelson, 2004. 491-502.
Piercy, Marge. “Barbie Doll.” Introduction to Literature 5th ed. Eds. Findlay et al. Toronto: Nelson, 2004. 316-317.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. “An Introduction to A Vindication of the Rights of Women.” Introduction to Literature 5th ed. Eds. Findlay et al. Toronto: Nelson, 2004. 19-23.
Munro, Alice ““Boys and Girls” Viewpoints 11. Ed, Amanda Joseph and Wendy Mathieu. Alexandria, VA: Prentice Hall, 2001. Print.
The difference between men and women is a very controversial issue, while there are obviously physical differences; the problem is how the genders are treated. It is stereotypically thought that the men do the labor work and make all the money, while the women stay in the house, cooking, cleaning and taking care of the children. While this stereotype does not exist as much in the 21st century, it was very prevalent in the 1900s. By using many different literary tools such as character development, symbolism, and setting, Alice Munro’s Boys and Girls and John Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums challenge this controversial topic of the treatment of women versus men in the 1900s.
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.
From a young age girls are taught how to act in society and how society wants girls to act. In the three stories by Jamacia Kincaid, Alice Munro, and Joyce Carol Oates, we see how the mothers teach and reinforce the gender roles placed on women by society. The daughters in Annie John, “Boys and Girls,” and “Shopping” are all subjects of a greater force while growing up, and they try not to conform to gender roles and the ideals of women that the mothers have.
In Marge Piercy’s, “Barbie Doll,” we see the effect that society has on the expectations of women. A woman, like the girl described in ‘Barbie Doll’, should be perfect. She should know how to cook and clean, but most importantly be attractive according to the impossible stereotypes of womanly beauty. Many women in today’s society are compared to the unrealistic life and form of the doll. The doll, throughout many years, has transformed itself from a popular toy to a role model for actual women. The extremes to which women take this role model are implicated in this short, yet truthful poem.
Up until recently, the definition of what a man or a woman should be has been defined, with boundaries, by society; males should be strong, dominant figures and in the workplace providing for their families while females should be weak and submissive, dealing with cleaning, cooking and children. Any veering away from these definitions would have disrupted the balance of culture completely. A man playing housewife was absurd, and a woman being the sole provider for the family bizarre. In Alice Munro’s short story “Boys and Girls” and Bobbie Ann Mason’s “Shiloh”, conflict arises when expectations based on gender are not fulfilled by the characters.
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.
We may know the most controversial piece of molded plastic formed into the shape of an out of proportion woman with blonde hair. Her name is Barbara Millicent Roberts, or as we know her, Barbie. With her odd portrayal of a woman, many believe that Barbie should be banned for suggesting to young girls that a woman only has one image to strive for. But Barbie is no more than a “piece of plastic” molded into something that looks nothing like a woman at all; she is a simply innocent child’s toy that should never be used as a tool for feminists. The Barbie controversy started in 1959 when she was introduced to a toy fair in New York after becoming popular overseas. The controversies went from her being too lewd to being too thin, both reasons supposedly encouraging unacceptable thoughts in the minds of young girls. Although many believe that this toy is harmful, we need to see that Barbie is just an innocent toy that promotes positive imagination of future careers and self-image in our young generation of females.
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 her story, Boys and Girls, Alice Munro depicts the hardships and successes of the rite of passage into adulthood through her portrayal of a young narrator and her brother. Through the narrator, the subject of the profound unfairness of sex-role stereotyping, and the effect this has on the rites of passage into adulthood is presented. The protagonist in Munro's story, unidentified by a name, goes through an extreme and radical initiation into adulthood, similar to that of her younger brother. Munro proposes that gender stereotyping, relationships, and a loss of innocence play an extreme, and often-controversial role in the growing and passing into adulthood for many young children. Initiation, or the rite of passage into adulthood, is, according to the theme of Munro’s story, both a mandatory and necessary experience.
In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” she tells a story about a young girl’s resistance to womanhood in a society infested with gender roles and stereotypes. The story takes place in the 1940s on a fox farm outside of Jubilee, Ontario, Canada. During this time, women were viewed as second class citizens, but the narrator was not going to accept this position without a fight.
“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.
Stone, Tanya Lee. The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie: A Doll's History and Her Impact on Us. New York: Penguin Group, 2010. Print.
Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” is a story about a girl that struggles against society’s ideas of how a girl should be, only to find her trapped in the ways of the world.
"Boys and Girls" by Alice Munro highlights and emphasises the theme of initiation. The story depicts initiation as a rite of passage according to gender stereotypes and a loss of innocence. Conformity plays a vital role in determining the outcome of the narrator's passage into adulthood. Throughout the story, the narrator is confronted with conflicting thoughts and ideas regarding her initiation into adulthood. Ultimately, she wishes to work with her father, and stay a 'tomboy,' but through a conflict with her mother and grandmother, she comes to realise that she is expected, like the women before her, to adopt the gender stereotype which comes with her growing and passing into adult hood. Similarly, her younger brother, Laird, is also initiated, but into man-hood, something he yearns for. In conclusion, Munro's story illustrates the struggles between the dreams and reality of the rite of passage and initiation, based on gender stereotypes society has placed on men and women.