Boys and Girl

Download as docx, pdf, or txt
Download as docx, pdf, or txt
You are on page 1of 5

GENDER CONFLICT

FOUND IN THE ALICE MINRO’S SHORT STORY BOYS AND GIRLS


Selly Shintiani
shintianiselly@gmail.com
Program Study Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris
Universitas Muhammadiyah Purworejo

Abstract
The gender case has been discussed for a long time but gender is still very important to be
reexamined, because of the society's understanding that has been embedded in patriarchal culture.
So that the prominence of the role of men against the role of women is still often seen. As a result of
patriarchal culture which results in gender injustice has a major impact on children. The view that
children who do not have the strength to defend themselves can be exploited by people who intend
evil to children
This type of gender practice can be seen in Alice Munro’s story “Boys and Girls”. This is a
story about a young girl’s resistance to womanhood in a society infested with gender roles and
stereotypes. Munro makes the point that gender stereotyping, relationships, and a loss of innocence
play an important, and often controversial role in the growing and passing into adulthood for many
young children. This story takes place in the 1940s on a fox farm outside of Jubilee. During this
time, women are viewed as second class citizens, but the narrator is not going to accept this
position without a fight.
Key words : Gender, Stereotype, Gender Identity, Gneder Inequality, Boys and Girls

A. INTRODUCTION
According to R. W. Connell “when sex role theory provided the main framework, there was a
fairly straightforward account of how people acquired gender. Babies were, from the start,
identified as either female or male and put in pink and blue baby clothes respectively. Blue babies
were expected to behave differently from pink babies – rougher and tougher, more demanding and
vigorous. In time they were given toy guns, footballs and construction sets. The pink babies, by
contrast, were expected to be more passive and compliant, also prettier. As they grew older they
were dressed in frilly clothes, given dolls and make-up kits, told to take care of their appearance
and be polite and agreeable” (94).

B. UNDERLYING THEORY
Gender is the learn used to make difference between man and women. It is different from sex
which refers to a biological category (Arliss,1991:6)
Gender identity is defined as a personal conception of oneself as male or female (or rarely, both
or neither). This concept is intimately related to the concept of gender role, which is defined as the
outward manifestations of personality that reflect the gender identity. Gender identity, in nearly all
instances, is self-identified, as a result of a combination of inherent and extrinsic or environmental
factors; gender role, on the other hand, is manifested within society by observable factors such as
behavior and appearance. For example, if a person considers himself a male and is most
comfortable referring to his personal gender in masculine terms, then his gender identity is male.
However, his gender role is male only if he demonstrates typically male characteristics in behavior,
dress, and/or mannerisms.
Gender inequality acknowledges that men and women are not equal and that gender affects an
individual's lived experience. These differences arise from distinctions in biology, psychology, and
cultural norms. Some of these distinctions are empirically grounded while others appear to be
socially constructed. Studies show the different lived experience of genders across many domains
including education, life expectancy, personality, interests, family life, careers, and political
affiliations. Gender inequality is experienced differently across cultures.
 Plot of Boys and Girls story :
Main Plot : The narrator and her family
 Theme :
a. Gender Identity
There are few instances through which the narrator gets to know the real meaning of
the world girl. Firstly when her mother tells her that once a younger brother is old
enough he will be helping his father. Secondly, when her grandmother has her to behave
in a certain way because she’s a girl. And lastly when her fother’s day in the end that
after all she’s just a girl so of course she will cry.
b. Gender Inequality
About gender inequality same with this team her mother differentiates between the
narrator and her brother

C. DISCUSSION
The protagonist in Alice Munro’s short-story “Boys and Girls” is a girl who grows up in the mid-
20thcentury in Canada. She lives with her family, which consists of her mother, father, and little
brother Laird, on their farm, and her life is characterized by different gender roles. Munro does not
give the girl a name, and by not doing so the protagonist is seen as someone without an identity and
any power of her own. The fact that the girl’s little brother has got a name indicates that he, simply
because he is a boy, is more important, and that he is the one with power. The protagonist of the
story is torn between the “girl” life with her mother inside the house in the kitchen, and the “boy”
life with her father outside the house helping out with the farm. The main conflicts in the story are
the different expectations between a girl and a boy, but also the protagonist’s feelings towards, and
struggle to find, an identity of her own.
The girl’s belief that she can be of great value to her father in his work are destroyed when she
realizes society’s view and expectations of her. The protagonist wants to work with her father out
on their fox farm and likes the attention that her father gives her while working. This is shown
when a salesman comes to the farm during the time that the protagonist is outside helping her
father rake the fresh cut grass, her father introduces her as his “new hired man” to which the
salesman answers “I thought it was only a girl.” If it had been her brother, Laird, instead of the girl
then the situation would probably have been a lot different. This is because he will eventually take
the girl’s place as the father’s helper and then the father’s place as the fox farmer. This is something
that the protagonist’s mother says to the father when she wants the girl to come inside to do the
chores of a girl :
“Wait till Laird gets a little bigger, then you’ll have a real help”. (page 4)
The girl in the story tries hard to find her own identity, and she does not want to be just a
traditional girl. This is quite evident when the girl talks about her mother and the work that the
mother performs. The protagonist thinks of her mother as a person that cannot be trusted, she
thinks that her mother is plotting something to get she to stay in the house more. The protagonist
does not find her mother’s work as important as her father’s; the inside work she thinks of as
endless, dreary, and peculiarly depressing while the outside work with her father was ritualistically
important. The protagonist does not want to be just a girl inside the house, she want to become
someone who makes a difference. This is very evident when the protagonist talks about the stories
that she tells herself every night before she falls asleep. The stories are filled with heroic moments
and the central person in these stories is the girl herself. This heroic woman is what the protagonist
wants to become in the future, but it is the opposite of the stereotypical girl that her family insists
her to become. The protagonist’s struggle to find her own identity is also expressed with her
identification with a horse called Flora. Flora is to be killed as fox meat, but since the horse is
powerful, rebellious, and strong she manages to run away from the father. The protagonist is the
only one close enough to the gate, but when the female horse comes galloping towards her she do
not close it, but instead open sit as wide as she can.
The girl says, “I did not make any decision to do this, it was just what I did”
which indicates that she identifies with the horse. The girl wants to run free and do whatever she
feels like she does not want to be held back by the chains of society. Even though the girl opens the
gate she knows that her father will catch the horse. They would catch up with her in the truck. Or if
they did not catch her this morning somebody would see her and telephone us this afternoon or
tomorrow. There was no wild country for her to run to, only farms. The protagonist’s feelings
toward the horse’s escape are somewhat the same as her feelings toward herself. She knows that
there will be no wild country for her just as there will be no freedom for Flora. Conclusion, the
protagonist in Munro’s “Boys and Girls” is a girl in search of her own identity. She wishes to work
outside with her father, but tradition and expectations force her to grow up and become a girl who
works inside the house together with her mother instead of becoming the free and independent
woman of her dreams. Throughout the story the girl confronts the expectations and boundaries
that are set up for her. She tries to fight them and finds some encouragement and inspiration in the
horse, Flora, but in the end she knows that the expectations are too many, and she finally accepts
them.

Characters :
 Her father, who seems to have an unspoken appreciation for her work on the farm even
though she is a girl, but who nevertheless devalues her because of her gender at the end of
the story;
 Her mother, who resents her preference for working outside and tries to undermine her
independence by getting her to help with domestic work;
 Her younger brother, Laird, who will supplant her position on the farm when he grows. Her
relationship with Laird is quite complex: in a way, Laird is the only person she can be
completely truthful with, but at the same time Laird is too little to really understand and
clearly her enemy, in that he will take over her work (and effectively erase her identity).
 Henry Bailey, the farmhand. Henry is a “typical male” in that he (perhaps unwittingly)
devalues the narrator, teasing her with the bag of dead foxes (meant to be a joke, but also
not funny), or about Laird’s growing strength (also not funny), and generally just going
along with the unspoken assumption that the men do all the “real work” on the farm.
 Mack and Flo, the horses, can be considered characters as well; Mack, the docile workhorse,
is compared to a old slave; when he is shot he is going “to the place where the good darkies
go,” another of Bailey’s unfunny jokes. Flo, on the other hand, the spirited mare, is more
akin to the sort of person the narrator would like to be, in that she dares to attempt to
escape.

D. CONCLUSION
From the analysis above, we can get some final remaks as follow :
1. About stereotypes, a girl who tries to change herself to be able to do anything and change
her nature as an ordinary woman
2. This short story is a reflection of gender inequality that occurs in boys in one family

REFERENCES

- Munro, Alice. Boys and Girls, in The Norton Introduction to Literature: Shorter eleventh
Edition, ed. Kelly J. Mays (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013), 137-147
- https://www.ukessays.com/essays/english-literature/short-analysis-of-alice-munros-
story-english-literature-essay.php
- https://www.definitions.net/definition/Gender
- https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/917990-overview
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7UNvT8Y9rg

You might also like