Research Guides: Boys and Girls: Critical Articles

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(Un-)Doing Gender: Alice Munro, ‘Boys and Girls’ (1964)
In the following essay, Nischik discusses autobiographical elements of the short story “Boys and Girls,” noting the frequency with which Munro’s adolescent characters are confronted with strict gender norms that divide them into “different species, ‘boys and girls.’” He observes that the story’s young female protagonist, a victim of these repressive ideals, is nevertheless able to develop a complex relationship to gender, which hints at the open nature of Munro’s later work.
Penning in the Bodies: The Construction of Gendered Subjects in Alice Munro's 'Boys and Girls'
Alice Munro's short story "Boys and Girls" aligns capitalism with patriarchy; the story's narrator and her brother are systemically produced into their respective adult gendered roles. The controlling of space -- the farm, the fox pens, and the domestic enclosure of women -- by the narrator's father is necessary to the support of capitalist production. The narrator's initial alignment with the masculine world is eroded until she is forced into the less real feminine sphere.
The Unheard Symphony: A Reaction against Blatant Sexism in Alice Munro's "Boys and Girls".
Alice Munro discloses her chosen ideas about feminine sensibilities through the three stories "Day of the Butterfly," "Boys and Girls" and "Red Dress-1946." These stories are chiefly written as a reaction against the sexist attitudes towards girls and women. Furthermore, these stories are written from the perspective of childhood and adolescence which explicitly denounce the established social taboos against a girl. In the story, "Boys and Girls," Munro the prophet of existential feminism has written explicitly about sexism for the first time, for the story contours the time with a fresh phase of sexism to the readers. All the basic features of Munro's peculiar vision are present in the story and Munro is very clever in representing this age old, irrevocable and persistent problem of gender discrimination that is actually phrased through the narrator herself who renders her life, as she has experienced on account of being a girl. The heroine becomes aware at an early age of the socializing process whereby sex distinctions determine her relations to others. She is expected to help her mother in the house. She is not allowed to work with her brother and her father in the fox pens. She is conditioned to be gentle in her behavior, submissive to authority and modest about her accomplishments.
Alice Munro (The Influence of Painting on Five Canadian Writers)

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