Boys And Girls By Alice Munro

Society places, ideas concerning proper behaviors regarding gender roles. How does one handle this pressure placed by a society? Is accepting the pressure of society alright or is it possible to overcome the gender stereotype placed by society to achieve self fulfillment? "Gender is not an easy conversation to have. It makes people uncomfortable, sometimes even irritable. Both men and women are resistant to talk about gender, or are quick to dismiss the problems of gender. Because thinking of changing the status quo is always uncomfortable." -Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Gender inequality holds back the growth of individuals, the development of countries and the evolution of societies, to the disadvantage of both men and women. In the short story “Boys and
Girls”, there lies a cardinal theme embedded in the text by Alice Munro, that suggests gender identity roles narrows the path of individuals.
The blocked path of the young protagonist -whose name was never mentioned- can be shown through the different types of symbolism, foxes can represent in the short story. The symbol of the fox in the story is very critical. Munro places the protagonist on a “silver fox” (148) farm to show the similarities of the fox maturing to be slaughtered and the maturing of a girl into a woman. Therefore the value of the fox is a symbol of the value of a woman. The foxes are raised to be slaughtered for their magnificent pelts. Just as girls are raised to be married, a "pelt” to their husbands, but tragically life changing for the girl. "The naked, slippery bodies [that] were collected in a sack and buried at the dump,” (149) is symbolic of women being raised for a specific purpose since birth. The dump would be the life of a woman like the protagonists “hot dark kitchen”(153) and the sack being buried is the “endless, dreary and peculiarly depressing” (153) duties and responsibilities that come with it. The naked, slippery bodies are symbolic of the protagonist and many other women being exposed and unveiled from
their comfort zone into the complex world. In this short story, Munro also portrays the foxes as a time symbol. It is symbolic that time keeps going and everything has its season. A fox is raised until "fall and early winter, when their fur [is] prime,” (148) and then they will be “killed and skinned”. Girls are also raised for a certain amount of time, until they are "primed”, and then they are entered into womanhood, which to them is just like being "killed and skinned.” “The foxes inhabited a world...made for them” by the protagonist's father. (150) What the man made for the foxes was monumental and it has everything the foxes could possibly need, but it wasn’t what the freedom they wanted, but it was what the man wanted for them. This symbolizes how men treat women by giving them everything they can ever want, but keeping them enslaved, not allowing them to express their unhindered thoughts.