Gender roles issue has always been a topic of great concern to the whole world. It is the type of social roles and regarded as either “male” and “female”. The physical and psychological structure differences between men and women make them have different ways of dealing with things. Those huge gap between both sexes are often the most important factor that leading to contradictions. As the two texts called “Boys and Girls” and “Hiils Like White Elephant” reveals, the hero and heroine having the conflict with each other because of their different thoughts, actions and social status. This research paper will round analysis these three different ways that gender roles create conflict between men and women through the above two texts.
To start with, the leading man and leading lady in both texts have different thinking models towards things which caused the conflict. In the short story “Boys and Girls” which was written by Alice Muron. The author describes the little girl as a “TomBoy” in the beginning of the story. Comparing with obey her mum and stay in the dark kitchen to do all the girls stuff, the girl would much rather to spend time with her father. Although she is a “Tomboy”, but she is not cruel and cold-blooded as men. Her way of thinking is always concerned and cares helpless animal. Her father, brother and the worker Henry are exactly opposite, they are proud of shooting animals and making profits from them. In the story, after she knew his father was going to shoot the female horse – Flora, the little girl thought “I felt a little ashamed, and there was a new wariness, a sense of holding-off, in my attitude to my father and his work.” (Page 7, Boys and Girls). The girl feels very guilty and disagree with what they are doing. However, her brother, Laird images the killing as a new life for himself, he reached maturity by priding himself in the killing. Their different views are the trigger which leads to the main conflict. Furthermore, the hero and heroine in the story of “Hills Like White Elephants” also arguing about abortion a lot throughout the whole story. The girl, Jig, does not want have abortion, because she thinks of the child as the beautifully bond of the affection. But the American which is her boyfriend doesn’t think so. He keep emphasize that “It is the only thing between us”. The man regarded this unborn child as a kind of burden, he is irresponsible and advocate personal freedom. Consequently, the male and female in both texts has different way of thinking base on their nature gender differences and nurture personality and identity differences which leads to the problem.
In addition, the inequality social status between male and female occurs both in the early the Ebro and Southern Ontario in 1930s which caused the conflict. In the text “Boys and Girls”, the author Alice Muron spend lots of ink to detailed describe the gender inequality which could also reflect the social issue. In the story, the girl which is the narrator remain nameless throughout the whole story, however, the narrator’s brother is given the name of Laird which symbolized the “Lord”. This evidence clearly shows how the male child was superior in the eye of their parents. Moreover,