Quote:
Originally Posted by Lalwendë
Maybe a Hobbit 'coming of age' just meant something different in The Shire than it does to us. It's not as if they have longer childhoods or much longer lives anyway. The traditional British 'coming of age' point, at 21, is pretty meaningless anyhow as most things you need to be an adult to indulge in become legal at the age of 16, 17 and 18. I can't think of anything which is or ever has been legalised at the age of 21?
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21 used to be the voting age until 1970, the age of consent for homosexual men between 1967 and 2001, and for a while it was the age at which you could marry without parental consent (1751-1822) -it reverted to 12 for a girl and 14 for a boy until 1929!!!!!
However I imagine it would have been the legal majority and voting age that surely Tolkien was thinking of.
Personally 21 wasn't meaningless for me since my family were traditionalists and I got some serious jewellery
