"Boys and Girls" and "Girl"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how both Alice Munro's short story "Boys and Girls" and Jamaica Kincaid's short story "Girl" have autobiographical aspects and deal with the expectations of living as a female in their respective cultures. The paper looks at how both Munro and Kincaid's stories echo the respective cultures that the authors grew up in, and they portray the different options that a young girl faces in those particular cultures.

From the Paper:

"Kincaid's writing style is poetic and prosaic, and yet it is direct. It has a hard edge to it that smacks the reader with the realities a girl must face of the role she must play when she becomes a woman. A brief story, Kincaid illustrates, through a strong instructive tone, the complexity of a woman's life, and the conflicts that the girl must meet. Very different from the delicacy of choice and discovery that the girl in Munro's story is offered, Kincaid's girl must adhere to a life without choices. Attempting to breakout of the traditional woman role, Munro's girl questions the traditional housework, and finds her mother's requests of chores as "dreary and peculiarly depressing," whereas she finds the male role and pursuing the chores assigned by her father as "ritualistically important" (117). "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Kincaid, Jamaica. "Girl." At the Bottom of the River. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000.
• Munro, Alice. "Boys and Girls." Dance of the Happy Shades. Toronto: Vintage, 1968

More papers on "Boys and Girls" and "Girl":

• Book Review # 106171 : "Boys vs. Girls; Girls and Boys"
• Research Paper # 105743 : "Girls and Computer Gaming"
• Analytical Essay # 141522 : "Gender Stereotypes in "Boys and Girls" And "Girl"

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