Unnatural Domination
Be a lady! That’s a man’s job! Girls don’t act like that! Go help your mother! Go give your father a hand outside boy! These are just a few of the common phrases that we hear everyday. What we don’t realize is that these phrases are designed to put us back into our roles; they control and restrict us. The roles and guidelines involved with being a male or female are the gendered subjects created by society. The sole purpose is to create differences between males and females, which leads to an imbalanced society with dominance and repression. However, these rules are often broken when individuals try to express themselves. These rules are made by society as whole; they are not in tune with every individual. In Boys and Girls, the author, Alice Munro, uses gender equality, indifference and gender role reversal in the characters of Mack, Flora and the foxes, to develop the idea that the process of creating gendered roles and guidelines is not natural and only serves to establish dominance and control in society by restricting individuals.
The foxes demonstrate unnatural aspects of gendered roles and guidelines by portraying gender equality. Both genders of the foxes follow similar roles throughout the story. For example, the foxes are valued for their …show more content…
Flora is a female horse who fits better into the roles and classifications of those of a male. She is described as, “…given to fits of violent alarm, veering at cars and even other horses, but we loved her speed and high-stepping, her general air of gallantry and abandon.” (32) This line describes a wild horse, opposite of the roles and guidelines that society has for females. She is harder to control, violent, and rough. Through this role reversal, we see that gendered roles are unnatural because even though she depicts a role reversal, Flora is still valued at the farm as horsemeat and as a
Be a lady! That’s a man’s job! Girls don’t act like that! Go help your mother! Go give your father a hand outside boy! These are just a few of the common phrases that we hear everyday. What we don’t realize is that these phrases are designed to put us back into our roles; they control and restrict us. The roles and guidelines involved with being a male or female are the gendered subjects created by society. The sole purpose is to create differences between males and females, which leads to an imbalanced society with dominance and repression. However, these rules are often broken when individuals try to express themselves. These rules are made by society as whole; they are not in tune with every individual. In Boys and Girls, the author, Alice Munro, uses gender equality, indifference and gender role reversal in the characters of Mack, Flora and the foxes, to develop the idea that the process of creating gendered roles and guidelines is not natural and only serves to establish dominance and control in society by restricting individuals.
The foxes demonstrate unnatural aspects of gendered roles and guidelines by portraying gender equality. Both genders of the foxes follow similar roles throughout the story. For example, the foxes are valued for their …show more content…
Flora is a female horse who fits better into the roles and classifications of those of a male. She is described as, “…given to fits of violent alarm, veering at cars and even other horses, but we loved her speed and high-stepping, her general air of gallantry and abandon.” (32) This line describes a wild horse, opposite of the roles and guidelines that society has for females. She is harder to control, violent, and rough. Through this role reversal, we see that gendered roles are unnatural because even though she depicts a role reversal, Flora is still valued at the farm as horsemeat and as a