Gender Stereotyping In Boys And Girls By Alice Munro

In the short story, “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro, Munro magnifies the idea of traditional roles for men and women. According to Munro and general society, stereotyping can begin in a regular household during childhood. In some instances it may even begin before the birth of the child. Many may not notice the preparation to brining a child into this world is the first start to labeling a gender. Selecting a gender begins with choosing a color, boys are typically a color like blue or green when girls are vibrant floral colors from pink to purple. Any color in between like yellow for example is just unknown or unimportant. Throughout the text Munro leads us through the trial of gender stereotyping and how it has become an initiation process

One of the male figures in this story is a younger brother named Laird. Laird is a synonym for Lord. Lord is an example for dominance and strength, features that one can only imagine a man carrying. This can be considered the yellow stage of stereotyping for the narrator who is female because her view of a girl contradicts what she actually enjoys therefore what she says or does is not important to her parents because she is not following the role of how a girl is “suppose” to act. The narrator finds she is interested in “Male” oriented activities performed by her father. “It seemed to me that work in the house was endless, dreary and peculiarly depressing; work done outdoors, and in my father’s service, was ritualistically important”(p.156). The father was a dominant figure in the household working out in the farm doing the more heavy work while the mother stayed indoors doing house chores. “It was odd to see my mother down at the bar.” (p.156), as a child growing up and seeing what is expected from a man and women with parents like hers, it is easy to learn with she is use to seeing. Though it is a struggle for the narrator between what she would like to do and what she is expected to