In “Boys and Girls,” Alice Munro explores the relationship between personal identity and societal expectations. She reflects on how identity is formed and wonders how much influence family members and others have in that formation. She addresses these questions through the lens of the narrator: a young girl who prefers to work with her father instead of her mother until a choice—and a reaction—shifts her world.

The narrator’s father is a fox farmer. He raises the animals for their pelts, and the narrator grows up helping him, at least when she is a young child. The pelting process is disgusting and smelly, and the girl’s mother hates it. Yet, the narrator seems to enjoy it.

Outside of pelting, the narrator enjoys listening to the hired hand, Henry Bailey, laugh, and she also likes to sing with her brother, Laird, after they go to bed at night. They sing because their bedroom—the attic—frightens them. The narrator makes up stories, too, and frames herself as a hero, rescuing people and riding proudly upon a horse.

But, most of all, the narrator loves helping her father care for the foxes. Her chores, such as filling their water dishes, make her feel important. The foxes, although sometimes named, are not pets, and the narrator does not touch them. These chores, the practice of caring for the animals, make the girl feel as if her life has a purpose.

One day, her father tells a visiting salesman: “Like to have you meet my new hired hand.” The salesman replies: “Could of fooled me...I thought it was only a girl.” The salesman’s dismissal does not hurt the narrator; instead, she feels only a great sense of pride in her father’s trust.

Later that year, the narrator overhears her parents talking, and her mother says she will be glad when Laird is old enough to provide “a real help.” Then her daughter will be able to give her more support with the housework. The narrator despises working in the house, does those chores quickly, and hurries back outside. “I just get my back turned and she runs off,” her mother complains. “It’s not like I had a girl in the family at all.”

The narrator now shifts to the winter when she is eleven years old. The foxes are usually fed on horse meat, but sometimes the horses are kept alive for a while until they are needed. That winter,  the horses, Mack and Flora, remain in the stable, and the children make pets out of them, at least to a point.

At this point, the narrator also notices changes in herself—and in the way people treat her. Her family expects her to behave like a girl, and her brother has grown strong enough to stand up for himself in their fights. “I no longer felt safe,” the narrator remarks. She realizes that she must become a real girl, which bothers her.

When spring comes, it is time to kill the horses. The narrator and Laird sneak into the barn loft to watch their father shoot Mack. The narrator is more disturbed than she expects to be when she sees Mack fall and kick his legs in the air. 

Something changes in the narrator after she watches her father kill Mack. “I felt a little ashamed,” she says, “and there was a new wariness, a sense of holding-off, in my attitude to my father and his work.” Then, the day comes when Flora is to be killed. The horse escapes and runs off, and the narrator’s father tells her to run and shut the gate. She runs,...