Adults as Children, Children as Adults

[PhilipIsles]

I went back to Madrid last Christmas, where I had a chance to see Velazquez's masterpiece, Las Meninas. While studying the painting, I became particularly intrigued by one of the young subjects, and I thought I'd share an interesting discovery I made about him, for it's lead me to think about how we childrens authors perceive our audiences.

I wouldn't normally send peeps over to my blog but there are a few images that I thought would be fun to share:

http://philipisles.blogspot.com/2011/03 ... dults.html

[polymath]

Investigating art for meaning is a wonderful pasttime. Like how children were thought of in the past. From about the age of six, when children had survived childhood diseases, they were treated like small adults. Their dress, their accessories, their ornamentation, their hairstyles shows they were thought of as adults. Between the ages of two and eight, male children enjoyed a second rite of passage, breeching, when they first began to wear trousers and receive fatherly attention, though some wore gowns until later in age. The first rite of passage was from the long gowns of toddlerhood to short gowns or shortcoating as it was known. Long gowns inhibited crawling and prevented walking. Female children's second rite of passage took place at puberty onset in the form of a formal coming out celebration, a debut.

[PhilipIsles]

One has to wonder how it relates to the importance of dwarves during that time. It apparently fascinated Velasquez:

[polymath]

I can speculate dwarves were part of entertainment culture then as now, though today there's a little more instituitionalized social sensitivity toward them.