Gender Norms In Boys And Girls By Alice Munro

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Attempts to be different and disregard gender norms presents a character to be brave and stimulate, not only internal, but external conflict within a story. Alice Munro produces “Boys and Girls” in which the narrator, whom represents the main character also represents the archetype of a tomboy. With that, the narrator enjoys working alongside her father outdoors versus working indoors alongside her mother. Oppressive factors surround the narrator, the only form of actual support originates from the narrator herself. In “Boys and Girls,” a rowdy, retired horse and the tomboyish narrator share correlating, righteous personalities thus being mirroring and representing each other and oppression of the narrator and the horse’s act to resists a supposed norm. Before continuing into a story analysis,…show more content…
That righteous act of going against what her father says in a moment of adrenaline further supports the narrator’s altering perspective. She realizes that she no longer sides with her father, rather she sides with Flora. According to Reingard Nischik, “the girl intuitively identifies with the female horse because, she too, wants to escape a certain death – if not in the literal sense of the world, then in the sense of the end of her free-ranging activities and options when she is pressed into a fixed female role pattern.” Nischik also states that her act of rebellion “is a silent outcry against her own domestication.” Just as Flora is caught and slaughtered, the narrator’s days of being the tomboy, gender-rebel type diminishes at the dinner table that night of Flora’s death. Being told that Flora easily escaped due to the narrator’s doings, the father scoffs and merely says: “she’s only a girl” (Munro 154). This short statement depletes the narrator’s embodiment of the gender role

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