Munro also uses careful and deliberate words which because of the previous assumptions that the narrator is a boy further dispels the idea that the narrator is a girl from the readers mind. When the narrator sings songs at night with her younger brother she chooses to sing “Danny Boy” which references the male gender. Another reference to the male gender is when the narrator is describing the fox pens and says “Each of them had a real door that a man could go through”. Also when the narrator is helping her father and a salesman comes the salesman says “Could of fooled me, I thought it was only a girl” (101). Although it is hinted that the narrator looks like a girl because the salesman said “I thought it was only a girl” it makes it seem that the salesman made a mistake thinking the narrator is a girl and then believes that the narrator is in fact a boy. This is the first part of the story in which the narrator is hinted as being feminine. The narrator is also constantly helping her father with work instead of helping her mother and right after the narrator says “ My father had just come from the meat house; he had his stiff bloody apron on, and a pail of cut-up meat in his hand”(101). She remarks that “It was an odd thing to see my mother down at the barn. She did not often come out of the house unless it was to do something – Hang out the wash or dig potatoes in the garden, she looked out of place, with her bare lumpy legs, not touched by the sun, her apron still on and damp across the stomach from the supper dishes” (101). There is huge contrast between the role of the woman and the role of the man in the household. The woman in the household which is the mother rarely comes outside and always works inside the house while the man in the household which is the father is always working outside. Because of this huge contrast between the different work of the man and the woman and the narrator working with her father instead of the mother it once again solidifies the idea that the narrator is a boy in the readers mind.
In the setting working inside the house seems to be a confinement which the narrator tries to escape while working outside is seen as very important and the narrator at first believes that she needs to be outside working with her father and not trapped inside the house. The Narrator says that “It seemed to me that work in the house was endless, dreary and peculiarly depressing; work done out of doors, and in my father’s service; was ritualistically important” (102). The narrator’s idea of where she belongs is different from where her family thinks she should work, because of the narrator’s constant references and activities that relate to the male gender the climax becomes shocking when it is revealed that the narrator is actually a girl. The first time when it is confirmed that the narrator is in fact a girl is when the narrator’s mother says “And then I can use her more in the house” (102). The mother’s reference to the narrator as “her” confirms that she is a girl and soon after the narrator starts talking about her mother and says “She Loved me, and she sat up late at night making a dress of the difficult style I wanted” (103). The narrator wanting a dress made confirms again that she is a girl. However the narrator views “girl” as more of a definition and not the person she is but something she needs to become. This is shown when the narrator says “The word girl had formally seemed to me innocent and unburdened, like the word child; now it appeared that it was no such thing. A girl was not, as I had supposed, simply what I was; it was what I had to become. It was a definition always touched with emphasis, with reproach and disappointment” (104). This view on gender is different than both the father and mothers view on gender because both believe that because she is born a girl she is confined to work inside the house and have to act feminine. The narrator’s grandmother also has the same view on gender and tells the narrator things such as “girls don’t slam doors like that” (104), “girls keep their knees together when they sit down” (104), and when the narrator asked certain questions she replied with “that’s none of girls’ business” (104).
After the narrator is revealed to be a girl the narrator’s own view on gender starts changing. Before the narrator was shown to be a girl there was no evidence in the text that the narrator did any feminine activities but afterwards the text starts describing her feminine activities. An example of some of these feminine activities is when she talks about herself “Standing in front of the mirror combing [her] hair and wondering if [she] would be pretty when [she] grew up” (108), and when she says “Lately I had been trying to make my part of the room fancy, spreading the bed with old lace curtains, and fixing myself a dressing table with some leftovers of cretonne for a skirt” (110). Not only is the narrator starting to fall into the definition of “girl” that she thought she was not before, but her views on the female gender is also changing. Before the narrator would daydream about courage, boldness, self sacrifice, saving people and being a hero but later the narrator daydreams about being rescued, and being beautiful which are very different. This is shown when the narrator talks about her daydreams again but this time says “I might rescue people; then things would change around, and instead, somebody would be rescuing me. It might be a boy form our class at school, or even Mr. Campbell, our teacher” (110) and later she says that her daydreams started to concern itself with “what [she] looked like, how long [her] was, and what kind of dress [she] had on”(110). The daydreams which she had near the beginning of the story and the daydreams which she has near the end represent the male and female gender, the male gender being strong and courageous whiles the female gender being beautiful and weak. The narrator slowly becomes a “girl” which she didn’t want to become before. In the first half of the story where the author has the illusion that the narrator is a boy it is shown that the narrator could help out and do work that men could do even thought she is a girl but because of the constant expectations from everyone for her to act weak and feminine she fell into that gender stereotype and became her definition of a “girl”. To further demonstrate the narrator becoming weak, soft and stereotypically feminine is at the end of the story when laird says matter of factly “she’s crying” (111) and the father replies with “Never mind, she’s only a girl”(111). The narrator describes the fathers tone as “[speaking] with resignation, even good humour, the words which dismissed [her] for good” (111).
In “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro the unfairness of gender stereotypes is shown through different perspectives on gender combined with setting and language. The setting and language in the story is used to show that the narrator is capable of doing a man’s work but she is confined to the stereotype of a girl because of the expectations from everyone that she acts that way because she is a girl, which highlights the unfairness of gender stereotypes.
