Boys Will Be Boys By Kincaid Analysis

Opposed to young girls, little boys enjoy the freedom of getting dirty, squatting, and spiting, and climbing trees, while the reaction they receive for those activities is only a shrug, or a commonplace phrase from the onlooker (society in this case), a phrase like “boys will be boys”. However, the rules change as soon as a little boy enjoying himself in the above described style is replaced by a girl or a young woman. Kincaid’s story teller also warns to “be sure to wash every day, even if it is with your own spit; don’t squat down to play marblebsyou are not a boy,” (Kincaid Lines 25-26). I do not see malicious intent behind the commends given to the girl, instead it is a harsh but realistic inventory of expectations a woman should meet.

For the reason that men are on the top of the food chain looking for “good girls” because their opposites, the “bad girls” are “not good enough to bear a man’s name or his legitimate children. That role is appropriate only for a properly submissive “good girl” (Tyson 90). So, while the girl is asked not to indulge in the “fun”, the boundary lines between the masculine and feminine gender are laid out when describing such “fun”, which holds a different meaning for each gender. Tyson asserts that “patriarchal ideology works to keep women and men in traditional gender roles and thereby maintain male dominance” (97). Maybe not the mingling of genders, but instead the mingling of activities they indulge in would help blurring the well-defined lines separating what is defined as masculine, and what is defined as