In her story, "Boys and Girls," Alice Munro depicts the hardships and
             successes of the rite of passage into adulthood through her portrayal of a
             young narrator and her brother. Through the narrator, the subject of the
             profound unfairness of sex-role stereotyping, and the effect this has on the
             rites of passage into adulthood is presented. The protagonist in Munro's
             story, unidentified by a name, goes through an extreme and radical initiation
             into adulthood, similar to that of her younger brother. Munro proposes that
             gender stereotyping, relationships, and a loss of innocence play an extreme,
             and often-controversial role in the growing and passing into adulthood for
             many young children. Initiation, or the rite of passage into adulthood, is,
             according to the theme of Munro's story, both a mandatory and necessary
             experience. Alice Munro's creation of an unnamed and therefore undignified,
             female protagonist proposes that the narrator is without identity or the
             prospect of power. 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 (425). 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" (425). This view
             ...