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Comparing Society's Ideas In Boys And Girls By Alice Munro

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Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls” is a story of a young girl struggling against society’s ideas of how a girl should behave and the roles a girl is forced into. Throughout this story we chronical the emotional changes a young girl goes through while living on her father’s fox farm during the 1940s. She starts as an innocent, naïve girl who takes pride in completing the outdoor chores alongside her father and brother. She has been her father’s helper for years and does what she can to escape the unexciting and monotonous work her mother completes inside the house. As time goes on, it becomes clear to her that she is expected to behave like a “girl” and start taking on the female duties.

This quote represents her change is perception of what
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She includes another shift in her attitude in the following paragraph. Dillard opens the thirtieth paragraph with the

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Throughout this book there are countless examples of the common gender issue in today’s society exploited. Today it is widely believed of equality in rights for all people regardless of heritage, race and gender. A majority of people in the world are in the support of female lead characters and an increase in the books regarding females. As time continues literature has introduced female leads with problems outside the typical house or friend issues. The only female characters introduced in the book with at least one quote is

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This job alters her because of the many new things that are happening. In Prudence’s words, “My life is changing before my very eyes. Less than a year ago, I was sitting next to my best friend at school, trading noted with her about the silly lessons we were learning.”(203). Prudence has changed now that she is working hard. She is growing so quickly so everything feels so fast to her.

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During the 1800s, women were supposed to adhere to the ideas of a patriarchal society. According to scholar Rula Quawas, womanhood during this time period consisted of “a sharp dichotomy between the home and the economic world outside that paralleled a sharp contrast between female and male nature; the designation of the home as the female's only proper sphere … and the idealization of her function as a mother and a wife” (Quawas 44). While men were expected to leave home and make money for their families, women were encourage to work in the house and take care of their children. These narrow expectations for women caused them to be economically and intellectually dependent on men. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the character Jennie embodies this stereotypical function of a woman.

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Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, Romania, on September 30, 1928. The third of four children and the only son. He was educated in Jewish sacred texts. He was taken with his family along with other Jewish prisoners’ military, and they moved to Buchenwald on a forced march of death. Buchenwald was liberated on April 11, 1945, by the United States Army.

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The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo has many critical approaches within it, but the gender approach was one consistent approach with its three concepts of gender roles, masculinity and femininity, and patriarchy and matriarchy. From the beginning of this reading, the gender roles concept was frequently used to compare characters and their roles in the story. As a punishment, Marjorie would be forced to act like a boy by her parents, who referred to it as “boying” days. “On boying days there would always be a job to do, a house repair project usually…it was almost as if he really did want a son there to help him” (Merullo 74). As a female, it was as uncommon for one to participate in house repairs and outdoor work, so the roles of gender were altered in this setting.

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Her thought was going to change, and she thought the matter of trying to exist and trying to improve herself

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Her complete personality change also brings about a new feeling of job security and security in herself as a person, knowing that she now was one of

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She continues by stating that change doesn’t stick when it happens all at once, what does create real change are “ persistent small changes that over time cause a break with the old

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Children's Literature is everlastingly framed by variable ideologies; this represented the standards and values of a didactic society in the nineteenth century, which was controlled transcendently by the church. Enforcing religious perspectives on the idealistic family life, gender roles were compulsory in respectability, and a woman's place was inside the home. The nineteenth century was an extremely confusing time, with its firm Victorian qualities, class limits, industrialism and expansionism. It was the time when society was a male dominated society in which women were controlled by the male figures in the society.

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Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, is set in the 1960’s, a time when men and women had specific and restrictive roles in society. Men were the ones to work and earn money for their families and women were expected to a caring and obedient homemakers. In many ways, those gender stereotypes are still very present today. The contrasting opinions of Atticus Finch and Aunt Alexandra provide the reader with the different views on how men and women should be raised, which in turn, affects the readers thoughts and opinions on the gender expectations and roles that are present in today’s society.

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Her refusal to submit to her social destiny shocked many Victorian readers when the novel was first released and this refusal to accept the forms, customs, and standards of society made it one of the first rebellious feminism novels of its time (Gilbert and Gubar). This essay will discuss the relationships Jane formed with the men she encountered throughout the novel and will attempt to identify moments of patriarchal oppression within the story. The first act of patriarchal oppression Jane experiences is quiet early on it the novel, during her childhood years spent at Gateshead. It is here where she must endure to live

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Society’s beliefs of what is wrong and right affects the narrator of this story until she meets someone who thinks differently than everyone else. During the dance, the narrator describes all the girls that are being chosen: fat girls, ugly girls, girls with pimples and girls who were too poor to buy themselves a dress. In total distress, she narrates, “Why take them and not me? Why everybody else and not me? I have a red velvet dress, I did my hair in curlers, I used deodorant and put on cologne.”

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As many other literary texts such as Jane Eyre or Gone with the Wind are more straight forward with their exhibit of views on women, this short story requires a more in depth, close reading to illustrate

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This novel is also autobiographical. Throughout history, women have been locked in a struggle to free themselves from the borderline that separates and differentiate themselves from men. In many circles, it is agreed that the battleground for this struggle and fight exists in literature. In a

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