Parallels are drawn between male dominance and religious dominance in Alice Munro's "Boys and Girls" and James Joyce's "Eveline". Munro's theme equates her character's life with that of the foxes raised on the farm while Joyce uses his sister's life, after the death of their mother, as a role model for Eveline. A conscious decision made by Munro's character to stand up to the male domination leads her towards living a life similar to that of her mothers. The dominance of the Irish Catholic Church forces Eveline to make the likely decision to stay and care for her father. The characters, while living in different parts of the world, experience the same oppression, one through male dominance, the other through the church that forces them into a life of servitude rather than one of freedom.
             Munro chooses to use a girl character as the narrator of the story however, her theme of male dominance is presented in the first line, "My father was a fox farmer,"(217) rather than "I grew up on a fox farm," giving the father the main role. Setting the story on the Canadian prairies in the mid-twentieth century, Munro depicts life for a woman as being filled with drudgery and meaningless tasks as seen through the eyes of her young character. The girl helps her father with daily chores relating to the foxes, which she considers ritualistically important, and the times that she is forced to help her mother in the kitchen are considered wasted days, dreary and depressing. (222) Monroe chooses to name the young brother "Laird", a Gaelic word meaning "Lord" yet leaves her main character nameless to show how unimportant girls are in relationship to men. The pelting operation is carried on in the cellar of the house much to the chagrin of the mother. She remains quiet and does not banish the operation to the barn, where it belongs, as her role in the family hierarchy does not...