Alice Munro 's Boys And Girls And Jamaica Kincaid 's Girl

After reading “A&P” by John Updike and Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls”, a centralized theme arose. Each story’s protagonist demonstrates a unique internal struggle centered on the restrictions society places upon them. Even though the short stories written by John Updike and Alice Munro are remarkably different from each other, it is possible for a reader to interpret similarities between the two.

Andrea Sanchez English 101 Ms. Kristen 29 September 2015 “Girl” In this time period and it has been a difficult time in society to grow up as a female and even raise a female, due to many gender differences, in which more things are considered false for females and not for men. In history there has always been a separation between genders or gender inequalities that have been going on for years and years. In the text, “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid, it represents the several struggles females go through everyday and it is illustrated at a young age, and is shown throughout the poem using different types of punctuation such as semicolons, sentence structure, em dashes, and rhetoric to create a demanding tone throughout the short story. Many semicolons

Since the 1970s, there has been a significant increasing in academic interest surrounding gender in children’s literature. Peter Hunt (2009) argues literature has gained academic focus as society comes to recognise how it can shape it “in fundamental and long-lasting ways” (15-16). This is particularly true of children’s literature, which Hunt argues functions as an “introductory exposure” for children to “recurrent ideas” about culture and

   Recent history boldly notes the protests and political unrest surrounding the Vietnam Conflict during the 1960s and 70s. However, equally important in this era are the women who pushed for gender role reevaluation and publicly rebelled against the established social norm of a woman's "place." Although Alice Munro may not have been burning her bra on the courthouse steps, threads of a feminist influence can be found in "Boys and Girls." Munro's main character, a girl probably modeled after Munro's own childhood experiences on an Ontario farm, faces her awakening body and the challenge of developing her social identity in a man's world. "The girl," an unnamed character, acts as

In order to properly view a story from a feminist perspective, it is important that the reader fully understands what the feminist perspective entails. “There are many feminist perspectives, and each perspective uses different approaches to analyze and interpret texts. One is that gender is “socially constructed” and another is that power is distributed unequally on the basis of sex, race, and ethnicity, religion, national origin, age, ability, sexuality, and economic class status” (South University Online, 2011, para. 1). The story “Girl” is an outline of the things young girls

Children’s literature is not an accurate reflection of the developing roles of females in America (Kortenhaus and Demarest, 1993). In Hamilton’s study of 155 best-selling non-award books in 1999 to 2001, nine best- selling award books, and thirty 1995 to 2001 Caldecott books, the results in titles showed a 1.8:1 male to female ratio, 1.8:1 in main characters, and 1.5:1 in pictures. The study also proved that female authors did not publish more books with more male than female main characters (Hamilton et al., 2006). In Gooden’s study of 83 Notable Books for Children over the years 1995 to 1999, the results showed a 1:1 male to female ratio of the main character, a 1.2:1 ratio in pictures, and the titles actually had 19 females to 18 males in them. The study also showed that women were depicted in non-traditional roles such as chefs and doctors. Males were still not observed grocery shopping or caring for the children (Gooden & Gooden, 2001). According to these results, male to female ratios have decreased to equity numbers in pictures, titles, and main characters.

The women of the story are not treated with the respect, which reflects their social standings. The first image of the women that the reader gets is a typical housewife. They are imaged as “wearing faded house dresses and

Although Zora Neale Hurston and Jamaica Kincaid lived in different times, thematically their writing had similar themes. If they had been contemporaries, they most certainly would have discussed their common experiences as black women who faced financial challenges and the racial divide that they experienced in their daily lives. Without a doubt, their writing was personally cathartic. Although in Kincaid’s writing, she addresses her issues with her mother head on, I have no doubt that Hurston’s stories were also influenced by her early family life.

Jamaica Kincaid’s Girl explores these controversies and writes a long form poem that includes a list of rules for young girls to follow as advice that will help them be more likeable and become a reputable “woman”. These rules are delivered in a direct emphasis with strict undertone. The guidelines given to the young girl can be inferred as a mother teaching her daughter who is at the age of adolescence. Jamaica Kincaid’s long form poem Girl highlights the stereotypical social responsibilities of young girls which is heavily defined by language, culture, and mothers. In the poem the mother figure covers everything from how to

Alice Munro in “Boys and Girls”, she tells a story about an unnamed girl who doesn’t have any perception about gender roles, and she is struggling in a society with gender roles and stereotypes. The setting of the story takes place in a fox farm and the girl’s father raises silver foxes to sell their fur to the fur trader, which has been used from the real life in “Dear Life”, an autobiography by Alice Munro as she explains ”The plot of land, five acres large, was the right size, with a hayfield and enough pasture for our own cow and whatever old horses were waiting to be fed to the foxes.” The other point that Alice Munro uses from “Dear Life” into “Boys and Girls” story is, the girl seeks to get attention from his dad and she is very enthusiastic

In the short story “Boys and Girls,” Munro allows her work to comment on the gender roles that are accepted in society in the 1940s. In this given time period gender roles in society were extremely limited and stereotypical. In the short story the narrator, a young female, struggles to find herself and discover what her role is in society. In the beginning, the narrator is oblivious to society’s gender roles as she believes she is equal to her brother and enjoys doing male duties. However, as the short story progresses, the narrator is exposed to sexism and stereotypes as she is being constantly reminded that a female’s place is not outside with the men. This stereotyped gender role becomes baffling to the narrator because she personally feels

Throughout the history, in all cultures the roles of males and females are different. Relating to the piece of literature “Girl” written by Jamaica Kincaid for the time, when women’s roles were to work in the home. By examining

In Alice Munro’s short story, Boys and Girls, the underlying theme displayed throughout the entirety of the story is conforming and defying to society’s gender expectations. This is shown through the literary device, symbolism. Symbolism is seen through Flora the horse and the protagonist’s mother.

“Boys and Girls” is a short story, by Alice Munro, which illustrates a tremendous growing period into womanhood, for a young girl living on a fox farm in Canada, post World War II. The young girl slowly comes to discover her ability to control her destiny and her influences on the world. The events that took place over the course of the story helped in many ways to shape her future. From these events one can map the Protagonist’s future. The events that were drawn within the story provided the Protagonist with a foundation to become an admirable woman.

In Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls,” there is a time line in a young girl’s life when she leaves childhood and its freedoms behind to become a woman. The story depicts hardships in which the protagonist and her younger brother, Laird, experience in order to find their own rite of passage. The main character, who is nameless, faces difficulties and implications on her way to womanhood because of gender stereotyping. Initially, she tries to prevent her initiation into womanhood by resisting her parent’s efforts to make her more “lady-like”. The story ends with the girl socially positioned and accepted as a girl, which she accepts with some unease.