Alice Monroe Boys And Girls

Only a girl? “Boys and Girls” is a short story written by Alice Monroe, 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. 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. One of the themes of Monroe’s “Boys and Girls” is people cannot escape society's rules and prejudice of gender so in order to be accepted they must conform to society's gender rules. Monroe shows this through the symbolism, use of setting and characterization. The author placed symbolism in the names and identity of the characters. Monroe creates an unnamed and therefore undignified, female narrator and thus she proposes
In this time period women and mothers had traditional roles, which usually left them in the house, while men also had their roles, outside of the house. Monroe uses the setting to convey how one is only accepted into society if they stick to there gender roles. The narrator and her father were working outside when a feed salesman approached them. Her father introduced the narrator as his “new hired man” however the salesman sees her as “only a girl” (140). This shows how even though she is contributing and being helpful to her father because she is a girl she will only be seen this way to other people. However, if she was seen doing something more gender specific like hanging laundry he may have see her as more helpful and actually working. Another example of setting to show how one is only accepted if they follow their gender roles is when the narrators mother is down at the