Stylistic Analysis

The text under analysis is the short story by Alice Munro, a Canadian writer, the Nobel Prize winner primarily known for her short stories. Her first collection of stories was published as Dance of the Happy Shades. Munro's work has been described as having revolutionized the architecture of short stories, especially in its tendency to move forward and backward in time. Munro's fiction is most often set in her native Huron County in southwestern Ontario. Her stories explore human complexities in an uncomplicated prose style. Munro's writing has established her as one of our greatest contemporary writers of fiction.   The short story "Boys and Girls" was originally published in 1964 and subsequently in Munro's 1968 collection of short stories, Dance of the Happy Shades.

The narrator, a young girl tries to keep away from any work in her mother's range of tasks because she does not really take any interest in that kind of work and shares her daily routine with her father. The narrator remembers that by the time she was eleven years old she was faced with more and more expectations of what a girl should be like and what she should do or not do. Her role in the family began to change, and the narrator concludes with telling the story of an event in which she behaved according to her intuition, is squealed on by her younger brother and subsequently is being assigned the new gender role by her father.

The main theme of the story is the theme of initiation. The story depicts initiation as a rite of passage according to gender stereotypes and a loss of innocence. Conformity plays a vital role in determining the outcome of the narrator's passage into adulthood and her resistance to womanhood.

The idea of the story is to show the development of the main character, inner and outer conflicts she encounters, a place of a young girl in the society full of male/female stereotypes.

The events in the short story “Boys and Girls” take place on a fox breeding farm. The father of the main character is a fox farmer. He breeds silver foxes, skins them and sells their fur. The narrator and her smaller brother Laird like watching their father doing skinning work, which he does in the cellar of their house each fall or early winter when the foxes’ fur is prime.

The narrator describes how in bed at the end of the day she can still smell foxes, and that this makes her comfortable. She gives the detailed description how the foxes are penned and cared for, and what the specific chores are that she performs to help her father. For example, she feeds and waters the foxes, rakes the ground around the pens.

From the point of view of presentation the text is the 1st person narrative.

The main character (and the narrator) of the story is the girl on the casp of puberty, unnamed and therefore undignified. Unlike the narrator, the young brother Laird is named – a name that means "lord" – and implies that he, by virtue of his gender alone, is invested with identity and is to become a master. This stereotyping in names alone seems to suggest that gender does play an important role in the initiation of young children into adults. Growing up, the narrator loves to help her father outside with the foxes, rather than to aid her mother with "dreary and peculiarly depressing" work done in the kitchen. In this escape from her predestined duties, the narrator looks upon her mother's assigned tasks to be "endless," while she views the work of her father as "ritualistically important". This view illustrates her happy childhood, filled with dreams and fantasy. Her contrast between the work of her father and the chores of her mother, illustrate an arising struggle between what the narrator is expected to do and what she wants to do. Work done by her father is viewed as being real, while that done by her mother was considered boring. Conflicting views of what was fun and what was expected lead the narrator to her initiation into adulthood.

The other characters are the father and the mother and the younger brother of the main character. The type of personages' characterization is indirect, as we have the attitude of the narrator towards them, not the author's description. The speech characterization of the main character should also be mentioned, as she uses complex syntax and learned words, though she is young.

From the point of view the text comprises the following parts:

- The exposition is the first paragraph of the story,

- The plot itself, which represents the rising action: "Girls don't slam doors like that." "Girls keep their knees together when they sit down." And worse still, when I asked some questions, "That's none of girls’ business." The narrator understands that she has to play the conventional and stereotypical role of the woman in society, but she resists: I continued to slam the doors and sit as awkwardly as possible, thinking that by such measures I kept myself free.

- The climax: "Instead of shutting the gate, I opened it as wide as I could. I did not make any decision to do this, it was just what I did."; "I had never disobeyed my father before, and I could not understand why I had done it. I had done it."

- The falling action "A story might start off in the old way, with a spectacular danger, a fire or wild animals, and for a while I might rescue people; then things would change around, and instead, somebody would be rescuing me. It might be a boy from our class at school, or even Mr. Campbell, our teacher, who tickled girls under the arms. And at this point the story concerned itself at great length with what I looked like – how long my hair was, and what kind of dress I had on; by the time I had these details worked out the real excitement of the story was lost."

- The anticlimax "She could of shut the gate and she didn't. She just open’ it up and Flora ran out.";  "Never mind. She's only a girl".

The text is the representation of the inner conflict of the main character, her resistance to womanhood, mas well as the outer conflict between her and her family and the society in general.

The type of speech employed by the author is mostly narration with the elements of description and direct speech.

In order to portray the characters, to describe the settings of events vividly and expressively the author uses such stylistic devices as:

Metaphors: (After the pelt had been stretched inside-out on a long board my father scraped away delicately, removing the little clotted webs of blood vessels, the bubbles of fat; the wind harassed us all night, coming up from the buried fields, the frozen swamp, with its old bugbear chorus of threats and misery; my eyes smarting and streaming; the bubbles of fat; the smell of blood and animal fat.- to make the reader better understand the descriptions, to make the descriptions brighter)

Epithets: (I could hear his long, satisfied, bubbly breaths: derisive eyes; winter-paled face – to give Henry evaluative characteristic), (They were beautiful for their delicate legs and heavy, aristocratic tails and the bright fursprinkled on dark down their back” – to contribute to the vividness of the description.)

Personification: “the wind harassed us all night, coming up” – to add expressiveness to the action.

Similes: (I found it reassuringly seasonal, like the smell of oranges and pine needles – the smell of blood is compared to the other smells that the girl finds as rare phenomenon in their house; when snowdrifts curled around our house like sleeping whales – to add expressiveness)

Oxymoron: (Henry didn't answer me. Instead he started to sing in a high, trembly, mocking-sorrowful voice. – to render Henry’s emotions brighter)

Hyperbole: (“It seemed to me that work in the house was endless”– to emphasize).

Imagery: The "odor of the fox itself" (imagery pertaining to smell) is something the narrator describes as "reassuringly seasonal" and a comfort to her at night. Images of light and dark: the "brightly lit downstairs world," contrasted with the "stale cold air upstairs."  Light = warmth and safety; dark = cold and fear.

Further images of light and dark in her room: provide the narrator and her brother with boundaries of safety.  At night, as long as the lights are on, they are "safe."

Henry Bailey's laugh (imagery pertaining to sound): the children "admired" the sound of "whistlings and gurglings...faulty machinery of his chest."  Despite his sickness, Henry Bailey also provides a source of emotional comfort and protection.

Description of the foxes pens as "a medieval town" (sight imagery): symbolizes the safety and security her father is able to provide, both for the foxes and for her.

Description of the "hot dark kitchen in summer" (mostly sight but some sound imagery): shows that the narrator feels caged in by inherently female tasks and contrasts directly with the freedom she feels when working outside, like a man.

In the short story “Boys and Girls” Alice Munro examines the gap between men and women in the small world of a farm. The author uses bright imagery in order to depict the setting, which is vivid and colourful, almost tangible. The author examines the eternal problems of gender role, stereotypes and prejudices in society and resistance of the main character to these problems.