Boys and girls essay
Boys and Girls – Gender Stereotyping in Society
Throughout our lives, society attempts to place rules on us as to who we are and who we will become dependent on whether we are a boy or a girl. We must decide ourselves whether to accept these rules and follow the image society has set for us based on our gender, or whether to go against these rules and create our own self-image of who we want to be. In Alice Munro’s “Boy’s and Girl’s” Munro shows that a person’s experiences and relationships will influence whether or not they will conform to these gender roles. In this story, the young, unnamed, female protagonist tries to create her own self-image but is overcome by the pressures of her family to follow these gender rules. Throughout the story, Munro uses symbolism of foxes, horses and bedtime stories to portray the theme that the gender roles society has set for us are limiting the lives of women.
In the story the foxes are a representative symbol of how women were seen and treated at the time the story takes place. Like the foxes, the lifestyle of women was restricted by man.“ It was surrounded by a high guard fence, like a medieval town, with a gate that was padlocked at night” (pg. 47), suggests that the foxes are trapped and restricted by the protagonist’s father because of the pen he has built to house hem in. This grand world the father has created for them has everything they need to survive – shelter, water, food, space – but it is not what the foxes want, which is freedom. This is similar to how men treated women. Men would try to win over the women with all sorts of wonderful material things, but women would still feel trapped and restricted by men because they weren’t allowed to express their thoughts and feelings. They had to do what they were told because this was the role that society had given women. Furthermore, the narrator places the girl on a fox farm to emphasize the similarities between the maturing of a fox and that of a girl. In
Throughout our lives, society attempts to place rules on us as to who we are and who we will become dependent on whether we are a boy or a girl. We must decide ourselves whether to accept these rules and follow the image society has set for us based on our gender, or whether to go against these rules and create our own self-image of who we want to be. In Alice Munro’s “Boy’s and Girl’s” Munro shows that a person’s experiences and relationships will influence whether or not they will conform to these gender roles. In this story, the young, unnamed, female protagonist tries to create her own self-image but is overcome by the pressures of her family to follow these gender rules. Throughout the story, Munro uses symbolism of foxes, horses and bedtime stories to portray the theme that the gender roles society has set for us are limiting the lives of women.
In the story the foxes are a representative symbol of how women were seen and treated at the time the story takes place. Like the foxes, the lifestyle of women was restricted by man.“ It was surrounded by a high guard fence, like a medieval town, with a gate that was padlocked at night” (pg. 47), suggests that the foxes are trapped and restricted by the protagonist’s father because of the pen he has built to house hem in. This grand world the father has created for them has everything they need to survive – shelter, water, food, space – but it is not what the foxes want, which is freedom. This is similar to how men treated women. Men would try to win over the women with all sorts of wonderful material things, but women would still feel trapped and restricted by men because they weren’t allowed to express their thoughts and feelings. They had to do what they were told because this was the role that society had given women. Furthermore, the narrator places the girl on a fox farm to emphasize the similarities between the maturing of a fox and that of a girl. In