Alice Munro Gender Roles Essay

Gender roles are generally neither positive nor negative, they are simply inaccurate labellings of the female and male attributions. Gender stereotyping can affect each person's thoughts, feelings, desires and most importantly their identity/individuality. The actions that take place in the stories Alice Munro boys and girls, Kate Chopin The Story of an Hour , Anton Chekhov The Ninny portray different types of stereotypes that affect the woman's individuality and depict them as powerless.

Alice Munro has often written about the gap that separates men and women. In “Boys and Girls,” the main theme is gender stereotyping and in the story, the author herself talks about how stereotyping play an extremely important role in young kids, which includes …show more content…
By using the point of view of the employer the reader can see how the employer plays a trick on her by cheating her out of the money she had earned. The employer made up reasons to cut down her pay. Yulia knows that her employer is mistreating her but she does not complain. There is an element of character vs. self for both the employer and the governess in which the employer thinks he is a very clever man because of the trick he was playing on his governess. Yulia was not able to speak up because she thought she would risk losing her job. This shows that many women are taught from when they were young that men have authority to women. She was not able to speak up; portraying that she’s weak and powerless to stand up for her. This would affect her individuality because she has this fear in her of not standing up for herself which could come back in a negative way, in any other situation she might face in the future. Another stereotype shown in this story is about women not being as intelligent as men. When Yulia finds out that her employer was just tricking her, he called her a ninny. “Is it possible that there is anyone in this world who is spineless? Why are you such a ninny?.” (Employer-