The narrative voice is intriguing when choosing a literacy technique when applied to Alice Munro 's “Boys and Girls” and Jamaica Kincaid 's “Girl” because it highlights the significance of women 's role during the 1960 's. The story of Boys and Girls is in third person narration describing an eleven- year old girl. This story was published in 1968, a time when the second wave of feminism movement occurred. This story gives information about adult gender roles. The setting of the story is in Canada during the winter. The narrator is living in a fox- breeding farm which correlates to the North American culture in the 1960 's. In the 1960 's, women were stereotyped as happy wives and mothers. In contrast, the society believed that unmarried …show more content…
In contrast, the eleven year old girl is describing how she is the enemy. The parental figures in her life were manipulative in ways that subject them to abiding by the society when it comes to the rules in the women gender. The narrator says, “ She was plotting now to get me to stay in the house more, although she knew I hated it and keep me from working for my father.(pg. 307) This statement is describing how important these roles were to the manipulative parental figures in her life. The father did not believe in the stereotypical women roles, which lead to him making her a hired man. During the winter, the family keeps and kills two horses to feed the foxes with horse meat. The name of the horses was Mack and Flora, which were a single female and male horse. Mack was the male horse who was characterized as a old black workhouse, sooty, and indifferent. (pg. 308) This statement describes how the stereotypical male in society should be like in the 1960 's. The male should have the characteristics of workhorse in the field of working in the 1960 's. Flora was a female who was characterized as an sorrel mare, a driver.(pg. 308) This statement describes how dominant she was a female horse. In contrast, the female women was not the dominant gender in the 1960 's , because of the limitations and lack of opportunities created by the predominantly gender of males. The narrator says, “ the word girl had formerly seemed to me
In Alice Munro short story “Boys and Girls” is about a young girl confused in life about herself maturing into a young women that takes place on a fox farm in Jubilee, Ontario, Canada with her parents and her younger brother. The character of the young girl that is not specified by a name in the story is struggling with the roles that are expected by her peers of a young women in the 1940’s. This young girl has been helping her father on the fox farm for many years in which brought so much of a joy in her life. As she gets older, as well and as her younger brother Laird grows older, she is starting to realize that her younger brother will be soon be taking over the roles and responsibility of taking care of the animals. Then her mother and grandmother points out the anticipations of her to start acting more like how a young women of her age should present themselves and this has great emotional effects on her, and at the end of the story she shows a final act of disobedience against her father, but it only shows the thing she resist the most, her maturing into a young women and becoming her own person.
After reading “A&P” by John Updike and Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls”, a centralized theme arose. Each story’s protagonist demonstrates a unique internal struggle centered on the restrictions society places upon them. Even though the short stories written by John Updike and Alice Munro are remarkably different from each other, it is possible for a reader to interpret similarities between the two.
“Girl” is a short story in which the author, Jamaica Kincaid, unofficially presents the stereotypes of girls in the mid 1900s. Kincaid includes two major characters in the story “Girl”, they are the mother and the girl. Although the daughter only asks two questions in this story, she is the major character. The mother feels like her daughter is going in the wrong direction and not making the best decisions in her life. The whole story is basically the mother telling her daughter what affects her decisions will have in the future. The mother believes that because her daughter isn’t sitting, talking, cleaning, walking or singing correctly it will lead her to a path of destruction. “Girl” is a reflection of female sexuality, the power of family, and how family can help overcome future dangers.
The women of the story are not treated with the respect, which reflects their social standings. The first image of the women that the reader gets is a typical housewife. They are imaged as “wearing faded house dresses and
Although Zora Neale Hurston and Jamaica Kincaid lived in different times, thematically their writing had similar themes. If they had been contemporaries, they most certainly would have discussed their common experiences as black women who faced financial challenges and the racial divide that they experienced in their daily lives. Without a doubt, their writing was personally cathartic. Although in Kincaid’s writing, she addresses her issues with her mother head on, I have no doubt that Hurston’s stories were also influenced by her early family life.
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 Alice Munro’s short story, Boys and Girls, the underlying theme displayed throughout the entirety of the story is conforming and defying to society’s gender expectations. This is shown through the literary device, symbolism. Symbolism is seen through Flora the horse and the protagonist’s mother.
In Jamaica Kincaid’s story, Girl, a mother is talking to her daughter about all the proper things she must do to be considered a good girl to her family and to the public, and when she grows up, a proper lady. She must follow the rules that are given to her by her own mother and by society. The mother also teaches the daughter how to act when things don’t go her way. She is told that along with being a proper lady, she must also be able to get what she wants and be independent. This story was written in the late 1970’s and gender roles, for women, back then were not being “followed” because women wanted equal opportunities (Women In the Workforce). “Gender stereotypes are beliefs regarding the traits and behavioral characteristics given to individuals on the basis of their gender” (Deuhr). This essay will discuss the gender roles that were given to women in the story, during the late 70’s, and in today’s society.
Throughout the history, in all cultures the roles of males and females are different. Relating to the piece of literature “Girl” written by Jamaica Kincaid for the time, when women’s roles were to work in the home. By examining
Andrea Sanchez English 101 Ms. Kristen 29 September 2015 “Girl” In this time period and it has been a difficult time in society to grow up as a female and even raise a female, due to many gender differences, in which more things are considered false for females and not for men. In history there has always been a separation between genders or gender inequalities that have been going on for years and years. In the text, “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, it represents the several struggles females go through everyday and it is illustrated at a young age, and is shown throughout the poem using different types of punctuation such as semicolons, sentence structure, em dashes, and rhetoric to create a demanding tone throughout the short story. Many semicolons
“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.
Children’s literature is not an accurate reflection of the developing roles of females in America (Kortenhaus and Demarest, 1993). In Hamilton’s study of 155 best-selling non-award books in 1999 to 2001, nine best- selling award books, and thirty 1995 to 2001 Caldecott books, the results in titles showed a 1.8:1 male to female ratio, 1.8:1 in main characters, and 1.5:1 in pictures. The study also proved that female authors did not publish more books with more male than female main characters (Hamilton et al., 2006). In Gooden’s study of 83 Notable Books for Children over the years 1995 to 1999, the results showed a 1:1 male to female ratio of the main character, a 1.2:1 ratio in pictures, and the titles actually had 19 females to 18 males in them. The study also showed that women were depicted in non-traditional roles such as chefs and doctors. Males were still not observed grocery shopping or caring for the children (Gooden & Gooden, 2001). According to these results, male to female ratios have decreased to equity numbers in pictures, titles, and main characters.
Since the 1970s, there has been a significant increasing in academic interest surrounding gender in children’s literature. Peter Hunt (2009) argues literature has gained academic focus as society comes to recognise how it can shape it “in fundamental and long-lasting ways” (15-16). This is particularly true of children’s literature, which Hunt argues functions as an “introductory exposure” for children to “recurrent ideas” about culture and
In the short story “Boys and Girls,” Munro allows her work to comment on the gender roles that are accepted in society in the 1940s. In this given time period gender roles in society were extremely limited and stereotypical. In the short story the narrator, a young female, struggles to find herself and discover what her role is in society. In the beginning, the narrator is oblivious to society’s gender roles as she believes she is equal to her brother and enjoys doing male duties. However, as the short story progresses, the narrator is exposed to sexism and stereotypes as she is being constantly reminded that a female’s place is not outside with the men. This stereotyped gender role becomes baffling to the narrator because she personally feels
Alice Munro in “Boys and Girls”, she tells a story about an unnamed girl who doesn’t have any perception about gender roles, and she is struggling in a society with gender roles and stereotypes. The setting of the story takes place in a fox farm and the girl’s father raises silver foxes to sell their fur to the fur trader, which has been used from the real life in “Dear Life”, an autobiography by Alice Munro as she explains ”The plot of land, five acres large, was the right size, with a hayfield and enough pasture for our own cow and whatever old horses were waiting to be fed to the foxes.” The other point that Alice Munro uses from “Dear Life” into “Boys and Girls” story is, the girl seeks to get attention from his dad and she is very enthusiastic