Stereotypes In Boys And Girls

Stereotypical Expectations
Stereotypes and expectations are central to “Boys and Girls” which reflect a common practice occurring in our society. The story uncovers how boys and girls are shaped into taking on roles that have been designed by society for their genders. This particular story tells us of a character that starts with a dream uninhibited by preconceived stereotypes, which then progresses through the recognition of such roles and finally into resignation and acceptance of her the social expectations within her world.
The narrator begins her story with a desire to work on the farm helping her father in any way she can. The concept of her gender and the work she desires to do has no correlation in her mind. A clear example of this …show more content…
Her reactions to the events as they unfold become less curious and aggravated by the remarks. In the story, a traveling salesman says he could have been fooled by the hired work(narrator), as he says he “thought it was only a girl” (Munro 142). This was the first remark towards her gender identity that we see in the story with no reaction as to what the narrator felt when hearing this. The narrator often excludes her feelings towards these lessons leaving the reader to ponder. Only later does the narrator start to let the reader indirectly know how she feels about the lessons as she does when her grandmother visits in the winter. Her grandmother gives her lessons on how girls are “expected to come under societal control” such as never “slam doors”, “keep their knees together”, and in a response to a question: “that’s none of girls business” (Korb). The author positions the lessons in a way that let the reader disagree internally on the subject and can’t help but feel like the narrator does …show more content…
The theme of what's expected of her and how she should act recurs more in the story and eventually affects the way she carries herself. She now felt unsafe in her male sphere, “the word girl had formerly sounded to [her] innocent and unburdened, like the word child” but she was no child anymore and now a girl “was not… simply what I was; it is what I had to become” (Munro 144). The narrator now begins to not only leave the male sphere through her thoughts but also her actions as the reader discovers her “standing in front of the mirror combing [her] hair and wondering if [she] would be pretty when [she] grows up” (Munro 147). This is a harsh change in her reality that also affects her earlier dreams of rescuing people that always started out the same but have now have switched so that “she no longer does the rescuing but suddenly a male figure is rescuing her” (Korb). As she transitions into the female sphere, she starts to also alter her belongings and room to further drive a wedge between the two spheres. She now owns “old lace curtains as a bedspread” and “a dressing table with a skirt” that now hang on her side of the room (Korb). She grew old of the common space she shared with her brother Laird and divided it with a barricade. This transformation and realization is slow throughout the story due to the lack of information from the

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