Sherry Chandler » Frye on Children
Frye on Children
The sound of children playing is a cliché of innocent happiness. I have listened to it, and what I hear is mainly aggressiveness and hysteria. Living with children is recognized to be purgatorial, differing from hell only in having some sort of end. This is assumed to be an inscrutable but unbreakable law of nature, but I wonder if it is. I think children are aggressive & hysterical because they’re in an aggessive and hysterical society, & would be serene and dignified if society was. Compare the song of birds, which is also sexually aggressive & which we interpret as innocence, tweet rhyming with sweet. Both are aspects of homo ludens, an aggressiveness with a shift of perspective seeing it as exuberance or free play. It’s like vanity in man—or woman—which has an oddly disarming & innocent quality to it even though it’s an aspect of pride.
— from Northrop Fry Unbuttoned. Wit and Wisdom from the Notebooks and Diaries (Gnomon, 2004)
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