By surrounding Alice in a dream, Lewis Carroll breaks the rules of Fairy Tales
Fairy tales are presented as true stories. Wind in the Willows maintains the reality of talking animals throughout the book. Fairy tales, Tolkien argues, gained their popularity because they dealt with important issues.
Scientific facts are important and Nature is fascinating but people have always been interested in more capricious themes like communing with other beings. Written and read works are best suited to fantasy because each reader and listener can call on their own memories and images. This is not so easily possible in illustrations, stage plays and films.
Sound evolutionary arguments link us with plants and animals, so it seems natural that in fairy tales people communicate with other forms of life. [After all 4% of our genes are derived from viruses]
People have always known that animals are different but they have also longed to 'get inside the skin' of living things, to lift the 'sense of separation'.
Fairy tales do not end.
'Happily ever after' is as artificial as the frame of a picture. Alternatives are: 'if they have not gone away they are there still,' the boundaries of the enchanted forest needs ambiguity, it shades out at the edges.'Once upon a time' evokes the timeless sense of fairy tales, but the characters must be named or the author will be accused of carelessness.
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