Outline for: Boys and Girls

“Boys and Girls”  by Alice Munro encourages rebellion against societal stereotype regardless of success or failure.

1  1.The female narrator works with her father in the fox pens despite her mother desiring her to be in the kitchen.

a.       “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.  I wheeled the tank up to the barn, where it was kept, and I heard my mother saying. "Wait till Laird gets a little bigger, then you'll have a real help." “

b.      The female narrator is rebelling against traditional gender sterotypes for woman by taking stereotypically male roles

2.The two horses in the story Mack and Flora symbolic represent laird and the female narrator. The  horse named mack represents Laird and the horse named flora represents the female narrator herself.

a.       : “Mack was an old black workhorse, sooty and indifferent. Flora was a sorrel mare, a driver. We took them both out in the cutter. Mack was slow and easy to handle. Flora was given to fits of violent alarm, veering at cars and even at other horses”

b.      The horses represent her and laird. Laird is the male horse who is easy to handle and indifferent which means he is willing to accept the role others impose on him. However, the female narrator is Flora representative of the narrator who does not accept the role other decide for her, but instead feisty and tries to defy the role imposed on her in exchange for a role self determined.

3.  The narrator lets the horse get away through the gate even though she knows that the her father and Bailey will probably track down the horse and kill her anyways

a.       “Instead of shutting the gate, I opened it as wide as I could.”

b.      The narrator releases the horse because the horse represents rebellion against the role of death that masses i.e. her father, Bailey and laird have decided for the horse. Her father, Bailey and Laird are representative of society, and they represent society imposing stereotypical roles onto a minority group of individuals.