A women’s place is in the kitchen, cooking dinner or cleaning. These words will certainly provoke some strong emotions if spoken today, but forty or fifty years ago this was considered an acceptable social norm. Alice Munro’s short story, “Boys and Girls”, examines the life of a young girl, and chronicles the effect that her parents, the influence of friends and family, and key events in her childhood, have on her transformation into a young woman. As children grow, they learn the majority of their behaviors and how to carry themselves from the first teachers they encounter, which in most cases are their parents.
As the girl in the story grows older, her mother begins to try to involve her in some of the daily tasks that a woman should grow accustomed to. During the time period of the story, “Boys and Girls”, a girl is usually taught by her mother how to cook, clean, and sew. A boy is taught by his father how to hunt, build, and protect his family. This way of thinking stems from the nomadic days of humans, where the man would hunt and gather and the women would care for the children. The girl in this story detests the womanly duties and instead opts for working outdoors with her father, “[she] worked willingly under his eyes, and with a feeling of pride” (147). She saw the work done in the house as, “endless, dreary and particularly depressing; work done outdoors, and in [her] fathers service, was ritualistically important” (148). At this point in the story she resists any change that may be approaching and continues to help her father with his work whenever possible. When she does help her father with his work, she finds that others dismiss her as inferior.
The common theme that is emphasized by others throughout the stor...
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...a transformation from a girl into a young woman. She is reluctant to accept the changes that are expected of her, but eventually realizes that they are inevitable. She evolves from a tomboy into a young woman, and her perspective and emotions change with her. The social conditions that were prevalent forty or fifty years ago during the era of this story have changed a great deal. As men and women both have begun to work outside of the home, the lines between gender roles have blurred. The girl in the story would most likely have gone on to be a house wife as the stereotype demands, but today a woman may opt to take off the apron and run for President of the United States.
Works Cited
Munro, Alice. “Boys and Girls.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Eds. Spencer Richardson-Jones,
Hannah Blaisdell, and Mike Fleming. 11th ed. New York: Norton, 2013. Print.
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.
During the Victorian Era, society had idealized expectations that all members of their culture were supposedly striving to accomplish. These conditions were partially a result of the development of middle class practices during the “industrial revolution… [which moved] men outside the home… [into] the harsh business and industrial world, [while] women were left in the relatively unvarying and sheltered environments of their homes” (Brannon 161). This division of genders created the ‘Doctrine of Two Spheres’ where men were active in the public Sphere of Influence, and women were limited to the domestic private Sphere of Influence. Both genders endured considerable pressure to conform to the idealized status of becoming either a masculine ‘English Gentleman’ or a feminine ‘True Woman’. The characteristics required women to be “passive, dependent, pure, refined, and delicate; [while] men were active, independent, coarse …strong [and intelligent]” (Brannon 162). Many children's novels utilized these gendere...
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.
A woman’s role in the early twentieth century still revolved around serving the male members of one’s family. Klara was tied to the traditional role of a female. She would have chores as well as having to make supper for her father, grand father and sometimes Eamon. Klara was more independence than the average woman because she was taught two arts by two masters. She could tailor suits, and carve wood. She had two skills that were named to be man’s skills. Her knowledge gave her the power to control what happened in her life. Klara was respected in her town for her skills because they usually came to her to make suits. Eamon acknowledged her skill and asked her to make a red suit. Her knowledge of these skills gave her more independence, freedom and power. She was one of the few female members in her community who had their own income. She had freedom to do what she wanted with her life but she was still restricted by her society because she was still a woman.
The story, depended on her affection for the historical backdrop of country Ontario, Canada, where she grew up. When one first peruses the story, it may seem confounding. Munro utilizes an outside storyteller, who bounced forward and backward in time from the 1800s to the 1980s. This storyteller incorporates outside wellsprings of data, for example, news cut-outs and portions from books—that intrude on the stream of the story and stun the follower, and, toward the end of the story, the credibility of the storyteller is raised doubt about, which can make a few pursuers address the purpose of the story. However, when one warrens more profound, the explanations behind these apparently bumping account devices, which are another trademark of Munro's written work, turn out to be clear. Through its complicated structure and the utilization of a sketchy storyteller, "Meneseteung" eventually investigates numerous topics. Therefore, Munro's story can be delighted in on numerous levels. One can read the story as a faithful piece, analysing the life of a Canadian frontierswoman who lives in a male-ruled society and who experiences the improper parts of the human experience. One can likewise focus on the storyteller, who is recreating this story by utilizing reliable bits of data and extrapolating to cover the crevices.
In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the role of a woman in society is one of domestic duties. Jeenie, the protagonist’s sister-in-law, is a great example of this. The protagonist is forbidden, by her husband, to “work” until she is well again, so Jeenie steps in and assumes her domestic identity of a woman and wife. The protagonist calls her “a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper” and says she “hopes for no better profession” (Gilman 343). Jeenie clearly has no aspirations outside the confines of her domestic role. The protagonist herself worries she is letting her husband, John, down by not fulfilling her domestic duties. She says “it does weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way” (Gilman 342). Besides the domestic role, which she is unable to fulfill, the protagonist plays the helpless, fragile, role of a woman where she is deemed incapable of thinking for herself and is reduced to acting more or les...
Society tries to place many rules upon an individual as to what is acceptable and what is not . One must decide for themselves whether to give in to these pressures and conform to society’s projected image, or rather to resist and maintain their own desired self image. In the story “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro, Munro suggests that this conflict is internal and external and a persons experiences in life will determine which of these forces will conquer. In terms of the unnamed protagonist’s experiences in the story, it becomes clear just how strong the pressure of society to conform really is, as it overcomes and replaces the girl’s self image.
In the short story, “Girl,” the narrator describes certain tasks a woman should be responsible for based on the narrator’s culture, time period, and social standing. This story also reflects the coming of age of this girl, her transition into a lady, and shows the age gap between the mother and the daughter. The mother has certain beliefs that she is trying to pass to her daughter for her well-being, but the daughter is confused by this regimented life style. The author, Jamaica Kincaid, uses various tones to show a second person point of view and repetition to demonstrate what these responsibilities felt like, how she had to behave based on her social standing, and how to follow traditional customs.
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.
She grew up with her mom, dad, and thirteen siblings on a farm and enjoyed it very much. Laura and her sisters helped her mother with tend to the house. Her mother worked from home doing chores for other people and the interviewee continued on saying “That’s all married women could do.” Laura stated how there weren’t a lot of jobs for women to begin with. Most of the jobs available for women went to those who were widows or single so it was normal for married women to work from home. The women working from home not only did laundry and iron for other families for income but they also were babysitting the children of people working outside of their home. Her father never did any of the household chores, and was never asked to help with them either. He did all of the work that needed to be done outside such as farming, cleaning the barn, cutting grass, etc.. Her brothers also helped the father complete these tasks. The work they did included milking the cows and goats, cleaning out the barn, tending to the chickens by cleaning their chicken coops and gathering eggs. They then walked to the nearest store to sell their items. “Each of us had our own set of chores we had to do daily or we didn’t eat supper,” the Laura explained. “We had to dust, sweep, cook, do laundry, make beds, wash the dishes, anything to keep the house
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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.
The literary titles by Frances Power Cobbe, Sarah Stickney Ellis, Charlotte Bronte, Anne Bronte, John Henry Cardinal Newman, Sir Henry Newbolt, and Caroline Norton reveal society's view on women and men during the Victorian era. Throughout the Victorian era, women were treated as inferior and typically reduced to roles as mothers and wives. Some women, however, were fortunate to become governesses or schoolteachers. Nevertheless, these educated women were still at the mercy of men. Males dominated the opinions of women, and limited their influence in society. From an early age, young men were trained to be dominant figures and protectors over their home and country. Not until after World War I would women have some of these same opportunities as men.
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.