Hardships in Boys and Girls by Alice Munro :: Boys and Girls Alice Munro

In her story, Boys and Girls, Alice Munro depicts the hardships and successes of the rite of release into maturity date through her portrayal of a young storyteller 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 Munros story, unidentified by a make, goes through an total and radical initiation into adulthood, similar to that of her younger brother. Munro proposes that gender stereotyping, relationships, and a loss of innocence pass an extreme, and often-controversial role in the growing and go across into adulthood for many young children. Initiation, or the rite of passage into adulthood, is, check to the theme of Munros story, both a mandatory and required experience. Alice Munros creation of an unnamed and therefore undignified, female protagonist proposes that the narrator is without indistinguishability or the pros pect of power. Unlike the narrator, the young brother Laird is named a name that means "lord" and implies that he, by virtue of his gender alone, is invested with identity and is to move a master. This stereotyping in names alone seems to suggest that gender does play an important role in the initiation of young children into adults. Growing up, the narrator loves to help her start outside with the foxes, rather than to aid her mother with " gloomy and peculiarly depressing" work done in the kitchen (425). In this hedge from her predestined duties, the narrator looks upon her mothers assigned tasks to be "endless," while she views the work of her suffer as "ritualistically important" (425). This view illustrates her happy childhood, filled with dreams and fantasy. Her contrast amongst the work of her father and the chores of her mother, illustrate an arising struggle between what the narrator is evaluate to do and what she wants to do. Work do ne by her father is viewed as cosmos real, while that done by her mother was considered boring. Conflicting views of what was fun and what was pass judgment lead the narrator to her initiation into adulthood. Unrealistically, the narrator believes that she would be of use to her father more and more as she got older. However, as she grows older, the difference between boys and girls becomes more clear and conflicting to her.