In A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel, concerns about class, decorum, and civility intersected with contemporary dialogue about the distinction between humans and animals, specifically, how human children needed to be educated to be distinguished from the wild, uncivilized state of animals and peasants. Both animals held significance surrounding behaviors that separated the moral from the immoral; cats and eels were pets and food, and they were used in baiting pastimes: cat clubbing and eel pulling. Paired with the children, Leyster’s choice of animals raised multiple moral questions and allowed for multiple interpretations, making the work widely appealing and setting Leyster apart in a tight market for genre paintings. These layers of possible meanings continue to make the work compelling today and shed light on how visual culture reflected and reinforced human–animal and social class distinctions.

中文翻译：

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朱迪思·莱斯特的《男孩和女孩与猫和鳗鱼：交叉方法》


在《男孩和女孩与猫和鳗鱼》中，对阶级、礼节和文明的关注与关于人类和动物之间区别的当代对话交织在一起，特别是，人类儿童需要如何接受教育才能与野生的、不文明的动物区分开来。动物和农民的状况。这两种动物对于区分道德与不道德的行为都具有重要意义。猫和鳗鱼是宠物和食物，它们被用于诱饵消遣：打猫棒和拉鳗鱼。与孩子们一起，莱斯特对动物的选择引发了多重道德问题，并允许多种解释，使这幅作品具有广泛的吸引力，并使莱斯特在紧张的风俗画市场中脱颖而出。这些可能的含义层次在今天仍然使该作品引人注目，并揭示了视觉文化如何反映和强化人类与动物和社会阶级的区别。