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Articles

Volume 15, Number 1 (1990)

Penning in the Bodies: The Construction of Gendered Subjects In Alice Munro's Boys and Girls

  • Marlene Goldman
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1990-01-01

Abstract

Alice Munro's short story "Boys and Girls" aligns capitalism with patriarchy; the story's narrator and her brother are systemically produced into their respective adult gendered roles. The controlling of space -- the farm, the fox pens, and the domestic enclosure of women -- by the narrator's father is necessary to the support of capitalist production. The narrator's initial alignment with the masculine world is eroded until she is forced into the less real feminine sphere.