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Social Norms In Alice Munroe's Boys And Girls

490 Words2 Pages

Alice Munroe’s “Boys and Girls” tackles and portrays how the societal norms can shape and effect a person's identity and belonging. The narrator, a young girl living with her family after the 2nd world war slowly realizes she is stuck in a reality whereas her interests as a female is frowned upon. The aim of this essay is to discuss and show how Munroe uses certain terms and characters to portray the head character not being wanted for rejecting the general norms as a girl. To understand the role of oppression and underlying societal norms used in the text, Monroe starts of the novel by not talking about the main character, the girl, but introducing the girl's father instead, the first line being “My father was a fox farmer” (153). This choice made by the author is intentional and gives the effect of minimising …show more content…

The protagonist letting Flora go even though she knows she will never actually get free is correlating with her going against the norm herself. This even though she knows she will never be seen, or ee more than a girl in the eyes of those around her, as she is reminded multiple times in the novel. The last lines of the novel with her father stating “’She is only a girl,’” followed by the narrators' own thoughts “I didn’t protest that, even in my heart. Maybe it was true” (162) further correlates with the helplessness of never getting away or escaping the roles of society. Monroe uses the animals' characters and terms such as “only” to make it even clearer for the reader that the girl is stuck in society's expectations and grasp. Monroe addressing cadges, imprisonment, death and un-wanting behaviour connecting to the animals at the same time she is addressing a girl going against the norm of a woman, gives the effect to the reader that the situations are similar and intentionally

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