Introduction

boy and girlLesson One - Boys and Girls
Duration - 10 blocks (10 x 80 min + homework)

"Rigorous law is often rigorous injustice." - c. Terence, 185 or 195 B.C.

When an individual responds to injustice, there is often a decisive moment between the emotion and the response. In this unit, through the study of various texts, we are going to consider the question, "What role does kindness play when individuals attempt to determine their own destiny?"

"Boys and Girls" was written in 1964 and first published in 1968.  It is set just after WWII, when many farmers were trading in their horses for farm machinery.

"The story, narrated by a young girl, details the time in her life when she leaves childhood and its freedoms behind and realizes that to be a 'girl' is to be, eventually, a woman.  The child begins to understand that being socially typed entails a host of serious implications.  Thus becoming a 'girl' on the way to womanhood is a time fraught with difficulties for the young protagonist because she senses that women are considered the social inferiors of men.  Initially, she tries to prevent this from occurring by resisting her parents' and grandparents' attempts to train her in the likes, habits, behaviour, and work of women.  This resistance, however, proves to be useless.  The girl ends the story clearly socially positioned as a girl, something which she apprehends with some trepidations.  The story is thus a feminist parable of sorts, where a girl bucks against a future that will prevent her from doing, socially, whatever she might please.  Although most of Munro's work does not have such clear and cogent feminist interest, this story eloquently attests to how women worked during this century to change their social position substantially." - encyclopedia.com