In many books we are allowed to watch a child grow and mature in many different ways. In the story "Boys and Girls" by Alice Munro we watch as a young girl begins to mature into a young woman. We also get to experience life through her eyes and see how her perspective of things changes, many times to the dismay of the narrator. It seems as though things seem to change against her own will as she grows. Through the extensive description of setting, along with the use of the narrator's point of view, we get a good idea of what life is like on her family's fox farm in the 1950's.
The story opens with the narrator speaking about the life of her father, a fox farmer who sells the coats of foxes to trading companies and such. This leads to a rather interesting childhood for the oldest child of two. The narrator talks about how the smell of the fox furs in her basement feels like a sort of reassuring scent. This is something that makes her feel at home and secure, or as she likes to use as an example:".like the smell of oranges and pine needles." (365).
The setting of a story is defined simply as "a time or place" (Beaty and Hunter 149). "Boys and Girls" includes just a few settings, mainly on the farmland, which was very likely based on her actual homeland. Munro spent her life on a farm in Ontario near Lake Huron, many of her stories are based upon her life experiences as a farm child, which would lead to the conclusion that this farm story is set in Ontario (A83-84). The narrator first tells us what makes her room so scary as a child. As a young girl, her brother and her had a fear of their dark bedroom. We get a taste of that fear in her description. When we read about the setting it almost brings us back to our childhood fears of not just the dark in particular, but what was in it. Imaginations run wild about who is hiding behind the old hardened linoleum, or what could pop out from the wicker baby carriage.
