Ambitions within individuals are subject to change; However, desire plays a significant role when shaping identity and character. These factors potentially impact surrounding individuals as they develop perceptions of one another. The short story “Boys & Girls” explores the difficulties of challenging society's unwritten rules, additionally, the impact that ambition plays when individuals seek fulfilment in life. Immediately within the story, it is clear the narrator aspires to segregate from expectations that associate with femininity, leading her to initially obtain comfort and approval within a ‘man’s world’. In order to receive any praise, the heroine must compete with her brother Laird in a rivalry that favours men, therefore, making her …show more content…
The mother in the story gives glimpse of what is expected of women which is undesirable to the heroine; “The kitchen was dark and dreary [...]”. The heroine feels claustrophobic when she is placed within the confinement of femininity because her desires lie beyond the hot dark kitchen that makes her subordinate in a ‘man's world”. When the narrator is engaged in masculine activities, she feels fulfilled and productive, she seeks comfort in male roles because they parallel her normal expectations; “ It seemed to me that work in the house was endless, dreary, and peculiarly depressing; work done out of doors, and in my father's service, was ritualistically important.”. It is important to note that the roles women play in the story exclusively take place inside of the homes their husbands provide for them, and masculine jobs take place outside the home to insinuate that men have the right to be free and do as they please. The ambitions the narrator has counteracts her parents wishes for their daughter; "I just get my back turned and she runs off. It's not like I had a girl in the family at all.". This quote directly addresses that the heroine despises being apart of a feminine world, she awaits the moment where she can be free from the confinement of femininity. Initially, the …show more content…
When she discovers that Make, the male horse is being shot for food, she decides that by watching her father perform this act will allow her to conform to a male identity. She invites Laird with her, but right as she sees the life drain from Mack, she begins to realize that she does not truly fit with femininity, or masculinity. In order to escape from society's unwritten rules, the heroine must oppose her father which is something that never came to mind previously. Flora escapes from the father as he prepares her for execution, and he requires the help of his daughter to recapture her, however the heroine uses this opportunity to glimpse into a world beyond the gate of societal expectations. Instead of closing the gate, as her father requested she allows Flora to be free; “Instead of shutting the gate, I opened it as wide as I could. I did not make any decision to do this; it was just what I did.”. Although Flora is recaptured by the father, this glimpse into freedom allows the heroine to hold onto her ambitions to find fulfilment. The end of the story concludes with the heroine seemingly succumbing to femininity; her father questions her actions making her cry, submitting to him. Alice Munro leaves a loose end in the story; “Maybe I am just a
Moreover, the mother faces the turning point of the whole journey when she courageously confronts her husband and finally voices out her opinion against being treated as more of a thing rather than a person. She reminds him that “[her] name… is Elizabeth” and should not be referred to as a mere “woman”, but being outrageous as he was, he yells at her to “shut [her] mouth” as she was trying to explain, and “[get his] supper”. Through the mother’s confrontation with her husband, the readers learn the importance of having the courage of speaking out what we believe is right despite of the outcome, instead of merely submitting in silence. Ultimately, numerous positive changes occurred once resolution to both the mother's external and internal conflict are addressed. Not only does “[the husband] often speaks to [the] mother as though she were more of a person and less of a thing”, but the mother also decides to “[teach] her two grandsons how to wash dishes and make
As a result, women were stuck at home, usually alone, until their husbands got home. In the story, Jane is at home staring at the wallpaper in her room. The wallpaper’s color is described by Jane as being “repellent, almost revolting” (3) and the pattern is “torturing” and “like a bad dream” (10). The description of the wallpaper represents Jane’s and all women’s thoughts about the ideologies and rules upheld by men prior to the First World War. It is made evident that this wallpaper represents the screen made up of men’s ideologies at the time caging in women. Jane is subconsciously repelled by this screen and represents her discovering continuously figuring out what she wants. Metaphorically, Jane is trapped in that room by a culture established by men. Furthermore, Jane compares the wallpaper’s pattern to bars putting further emphasis on her feelings of being trapped and helpless. Later in the narrative, she catches Jennie staring at the wallpaper’s pattern and then decides to study the pattern and determine what it means herself. Her study of the pattern is representative of her trying to analyze the situation in which she’s in. By studying the pattern, she progressively discovers herself, especially when she sees the woman behind the
In Alice Munro’s short story “Boys and Girls,” our narrator is a young farm girl on the verge of puberty who is learning what it means to be a “girl.” The story shows the differing gender roles of boys and girls – specifically that women are the weaker, more emotional sex – by showing how the adults of the story expect the children to grow into their respective roles as a girl and a boy, and how the children grow up and ultimately begin to fulfill these roles, making the transition from being “children” to being “young adults.”
This chapter is about how she faces the challenges head on, and how she solves the riddles and wonders of the book. The chapter also gives background information on Floras point of view. Chapter four is all about Floras past, and what a bit of her life looked like, before the book was actually written. All though all the people aren’t real, it still gives a little push on how her story began. And lastly, chapter five.
The only thing that mattered in her life was Drake. When running from Agi one night, she sees Drake. “Drake is ahead of me, and I have remembered things. Drake makes me remember” (208). Unfortunately, it was dark and Flora did not know where he went and had to wait to see him again. She rushes out of Agi’s house the next morning and finds herself getting help from Henny, a woman who works at a boots shop. Flora was supposed to use Henny’s money to go get some breakfast, but instead, she heads to find
When children are faced with emotional events that challenge their ideas, they take another step on the road to being “grown up” as they discover their identity. The short story “Boys and Girls” written by Alice Munro illustrates this coming of age by allowing us to follow the development of a young girl. We follow the main character, who narrates the story, as she changes from beginning to end. As the story opens, the narrator acts like a care free child, not paying heed to her gender. She then begins to react strongly to the way she is treated by her family and their expectations of her young womanhood. Once she realizes that some changes are inevitable she begins to adopt a new understanding of who she is which is evidence of a more mature way of thinking. This story demonstrates that difficult childhood experiences regarding gender contribute to a developing maturity and are frequently met with varying degrees of resistance.
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.
“Boys and Girls” describes a major turning point in a girl’s life, turning down a path towards womanhood. Her childhood fears of the dark and fears of being less than a perfect worker to her father and her control of her brother slowly dissolve. Her decision to free the terrified horse highlights her pivotal journey into adulthood. And her ability to cry with sensitivity over her decision of freedom, demonstrates the acute sensitivity of a woman.
In order to better understand the conflict, first we must define what conformity and self image are in the story “Boys and Girls”. Conformity is action in accordance with prevailing social standards, attitudes, and practices. In the time frame of the story, as well as through much of history, it was the social norm for women to be housemaids, and to rarely venture outside of the house to perform “man’s work”. The narrator however, has a different idea as to about how she wishes to live her life. She does not enjoy “work done in the kitchen” as she finds it tedious and “endless”. She does view the work of her father though as “ritualistically important” and far more interesting. This tomboy state of mind of the girl is part of her self image, defined as the idea, conception, or mental image one has of oneself. Upon reading the story, it is clear that her views come into direct conflict with her parent’s beliefs, and even mainstream society’s. While the protagonist’s self image of herself is a driving factor in the nature of her adventures and leisure, with enough outside pressure it can b...
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 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 the story, “Boys and Girls”, the narrator is not the only one coming to terms with their identity.
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...
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.
“Girls wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it is okay to be a boy; for a girl it is like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading” (McEwan 55-56). Throughout the history of literature women have been viewed as inferior to men, but as time has progressed the idealistic views of how women perceive themselves has changed. In earlier literature women took the role of being the “housewife” or the household caretaker for the family while the men provided for the family. Women were hardly mentioned in the workforce and always held a spot under their husband’s wing. Women were viewed as a calm and caring character in many stories, poems, and novels in the early time period of literature. During the early time period of literature, women who opposed the common role were often times put to shame or viewed as rebels. As literature progresses through the decades and centuries, very little, but noticeable change begins to appear in perspective to the common role of women. Women were more often seen as a main character in a story setting as the literary period advanced. Around the nineteenth century women were beginning to break away from the social norms of society. Society had created a subservient role for women, which did not allow women to stand up for what they believe in. As the role of women in literature evolves, so does their views on the workforce environment and their own independence. Throughout the history of the world, British, and American literature, women have evolved to become more independent, self-reliant, and have learned to emphasize their self-worth.