Opposing Gender Roles In Boys And Girls By Alice Munro
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In Alice Munro’s short story, ‘Boys and Girls’, the narrator is a young girl who lives on a farm just outside of Jubilee, Ontario, with her father, mother, and brother, Laird. The story shows the differing gender roles of boys and girls. Alice Munro does this by not including whether the narrator is a boy or a girl, showing how the adults 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 young adults.
At the beginning of the story, Alice Munro explicitly does not include whether the narrator is male or female. It forces the reader to guess. Based on the fact that the narrator’s father is a fox farmer and it explains the process in detail and how the narrator liked it, it would seem to the reader that the narrator is a boy. In addition, when the narrator and Laird are lying on their beds, the narrator says, “Laird sang “Jingle Bells”, which he would sing any time, whether it was Christmas or not, and I sang “Danny Boy”” (Munro, 1). This also makes it seem as if the narrator is a boy, as they…show more content… Stereotypically, boys are seen to be the heroes, which when the narrator is telling stories to him/herself like “I rescued people from a bombed building… I shot two rabid wolves who were menacing the schoolyard…” (2), it also makes the narrator