Munro’s “Boys and Girls” is an emotional story of a girl’s realization about her future life as a woman. The protagonist is an 11-year-old child, living on a fox farm with her family. They follow the traditional patriarchal household standards, where the mother stays home doing housework, and men work outside. Munro’s “Boys and Girls” is a story about a puzzled girl who struggles to find the balance between the battles of her inner female-housewife side, like her mother, and a boyish character who likes to help her father on the fox farm.
Throughout the story, the reader can observe the mindset of the girl change and, disappointingly, she accepts gender roles of that time. The story depicts clear dominant male gender roles in society and women’s subservient position. The narrator describes every member of her family, where the reader can get the idea of how this household functions. One can feel the author’s condemnation of unequal women’s rights throughout the whole piece.
In the story, the protagonist realizes how her entire future will be similar to the relationship model inside her family, which is based on the injustice of male perception specifically towards her. The girl is treated as if she cannot have anything to do with any manual work or questions that do not concern household business. In one of the quotes after the girl asks a question, her grandmother said, “That’s none of girls’ business” (Munro). Such attitude was new for the narrator; however, later on she started to understand her responsibilities as a female.
The household roles in the narrator’s family are clearly set, and each member has their own chores and responsibilities. It is interesting to follow how the little girl explores who she does not want to become based on her mother’s behavior. In the book, the main character’s mother rarely goes to the “men’s territory” – because it is only for men. Moreover, the mother never goes outside the house premises unless it is connected to her essential housework.
The mother’s example makes the narrator realize that it is not the life she wants to live – free and unscathed. Every time the girl looks at her mother, she feels pity, and no matter how hard everyone tries to make the narrator do housework and endorses her to be a true lady, it is not someone she aspires to be.
The moment of epiphany for the narrator is caused by a chain of thoughts that she already has, but one event specifically triggers it. Her father kills horses for foxes to eat; however, there is one horse, Flora, whom the protagonist especially loves. One day, Flora manages to set free from the father. At that moment, the girl has an opportunity to shut the gates and keep the horse, but she does otherwise. The narrator opens the gates wider so the horse can escape, knowing well that her father will inevitably catch and kill Flora. In the book, Munro depicts horses as a symbol that represents freedom, power, and liberty of choices, which the narrator aspires to have.
Unfortunately, due to the indisputable social norms, she can only dream about such liberties. However, the powerful symbol of the horse is ruined when they are ruthlessly killed in the domestic prison, where they have no ability to feel the wilderness and free-spirited living, which identically corresponds to the narrator’s state of mind.
At the opportunity to set Flora free, the main character realizes that she is held captive, just like the horse, even though she has that inner rebelliousness and strength inside of her. The girl has a moment of epiphany that she is no longer taking her father’s side; she will not bear the unjust attitude toward her anymore. The main character wants to run away from the conservative family and does not want to be put in the box of social standards.
The protagonist compares herself to the horse and understands that she is just like Flora and will forever be held back from freedom; she says, “A girl was not, as I had supposed, simply what I was; it was what I had to become” (Munro). This moment of epiphany makes the narrator understand how standardized the world she lives in is, and, regardless of her wishes, she must always conform to a set of accepted societal norms.
When the narrator consciously opens the gate to free the horse, Flora, she sees that she is similar to the horse: locked up in the house with no freedom. She wants to let Flora feel that last moment of being free before she is killed. According to one of the definitions of epiphany in Merriam-Webster dictionary, it is “an intuitive grasp of reality through something (such as an event) usually simple and striking” (“Epiphany”).
This definition accurately describes the feeling the narrator experiences when she opens the gates for the horse to escape. She knows instantly that her fate is the same as that of the other women before her. The protagonist says, “I did not regret it; when she came running at me, I held the gate open; that was the only thing I could do” (Munro). Deep inside, she understands it could be the last thing the girl could freely do before she must adopt specific gender roles that have stayed the same for generations.
Later in life, the main character has to abide by societal rules as well as ideas about women and their roles within the family. The stereotypical public mindset takes over, and even though she always goes back to the thoughts of her childhood and aspirations she has, the girl will never be able to live up to the role model she has.
Many articles analyze the moment of epiphany for the main character of Munro’s the story “Boys and Girls” in depth and debate on the important issues the author intended to discuss. In one of the works, Nischik accurately explained the message Munro intended to convey to her readers:
The reference to the narrator’s story compositions shows the effect of her ongoing socialization into received gender patterns and thereby points to the central theme of this story, the constructivist aspect of gender identity — how male and female children are socialized according to different role patterns, forming them into two different species, ’boys and girls.’ (210)
This quote describes the nature of the epiphany the narrator has when she opens the gates for the horse. The girl becomes aware of the strict borders between girls and boys she will have to face, and it develops into the feeling of epiphany for the main character.
The protagonist has a bright moment of realization that her life will never be her way; she has to live in this patriarchal society her whole life. However, this contradicts her views and the narrator despises the world where men are always right; she does not dream of being a servant to superior males. When the protagonist was younger, she fantasized about saving people and becoming a superhero, but life changed. All the girl dreams about now is being saved from this sexist environment. I absolutely agree with this quote in relation to the short story; it helps to understand the central problem of this piece and sets a clear idea of what it is aimed to convey to readers.
The moment of epiphany in the narrator’s mind is a breaking point, where she imagines the way her future is going to unfold. In retrospect, she thinks of injustices in her relationship with her brother. Even though she is an older sister, she meets constant prohibitions with doing some work. Her parents keep telling her: “Wait till Laird gets a little bigger, then you’ll have a real help” (Munro). What offends her the most is the fact that she is never even considered to be trusted with any work to help the father, because of her gender.
The absence of the narrator’s name indicates that she is just someone who has no rights or power over the male presence and cannot have any personality. In contrast, her brother’s name, Laird, already speaks for his dominant position in society. It is consonant with the word “Lord” and should not be neglected by readers because it is vital to the story’s main message. The boy has always been superior in relation to his sister, even though she is older.
Adults neglect the fact that the girl is capable of doing manual work better than her brother, and never show her a drop of appreciation. The 11 year-old gets treated like a person of secondary importance, a puppet who constantly gets told what to do. Such behavior causes the narrator to experience the moment of epiphany and to slowly walk away from her natural “tomboy” personality, and instead accustom to accepted social standards, even though they utterly contradict her own.
Works Cited
“Epiphany.” Merriam-Webster. Dictionary. Web.
Munro, Alice. “Boys and Girls.” Women in Literature. Web.
Nischik, Reingard M., editor. The Canadian Short Story: Interpretations, Boydell & Brewer, 2007. JSTOR. Web.