Coming of Age in Alice Munro’s Boys and Girls Essay

In Alice Munro’s â€Å"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 â€Å"lady-like†. The story ends with the girl socially positioned and accepted as a girl, which she accepts with some unease. The young girl in the story is struggling with finding her own gender identity. She would much†¦show more content†¦Throughout the story the protagonist is left nameless. This provides the reader with another question of identity. Without a name to attach to the character, we are left withou t an identity. There is distinction between the types of power that are inherent through the children’s separate blood-gender lines. The boy is given a higher status due to being a male, while the girl is relegated to a lower social role because she is female. The young girl’s brother, Laird, becomes the man that is entitled to help his father throughout the story. At the beginning of the story, Laird is a small boy and is not as useful to his father as the young girl is. The mother believes the girl isn’t much help to her father to begin with, as the mother says to the father, â€Å"Wait till Laird gets a little bigger, then you’ll have a real help† (329). But, as time goes on in the story, Laird gets older and stronger. For example, when Laird and his older sister were fighting, â€Å"and for the first time ever I had to use all my strength against him; even so, he caught and pinned my arm for a moment, really hurting me† (331). Laird is becoming the help ful son that his father needs around the farm, which delegates the young girl to a position of less physical standard to her father. Eventually, the girl realizes that she has to become more like her mother. This realization is shown through the definition, â€Å"A girl was not, as I had supposed, simply what I was; it was what I had toShow MoreRelatedBoys And Girls By Alice Munro Summary995 Words   |  4 PagesIn Alice Munros Boys and Girls†, Munro tells a story concerning a young ladys encounter to womanhood in society which is infested with gender roles and stereotypes. Regardless of whether it is the past or the present, there have dependably been gender roles in society. In many homes, it is the womens obligation to deal with the house. This incorporates cleaning, meal arrangements, raising and dealing with the youngsters and in addition the spouse. 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