Interesting theory! You may have a point there -- I do not recall wondering what happened to fairy tale characters after 'happily ever after.' And yet, I remember thinking about ways stories could have gone differently, or things that might happen around their margins, when I was very young. Perhaps it's that I started reading 'above my age level' and there's simply more meat for speculation in longer books?
("And then they lived happily ever after" always suggested, to me, that the characters wound up rather like my own family... which, yeah, is not especially interesting. What's interesting is something new and different, not something I'm living every day myself.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-19 12:53 am (UTC)("And then they lived happily ever after" always suggested, to me, that the characters wound up rather like my own family... which, yeah, is not especially interesting. What's interesting is something new and different, not something I'm living every day myself.)