Another factor to consider is the psychologizing of stories that occurred in the nineteenth century, which was part of the psychologizing of the understanding of human nature starting with Freud. Not that writers were unconcerned with motivations and feelings before Freud. Those concerns go all the way back in literature, to Achilles sulking in his tent and Hamlet agonizing over his revenge for his father. But until the nineteenth century, the moral understanding of human nature was still dominant and the simple moral tale, concerned with doing the right thing, rather than explaining why people do the wrong thing, was still in favor. Most fairy tales are essentially moral fables, and like moral fables going all the way back to Aesop, they had no need to explore motives or feelings.
Excellent observations on the spare nature of these stories. I relate to the Old Testament reference, as I have often thought about questions and details left out by the text. The stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob raise almost more questions than they answer. The oral transmission of these stories over generations definitely explains some of the missing details.
I've sometimes told my children the story of "Tigger comes to the Woods and has breakfast" from memory. And it gets much shorter! Pretty much an outline of the tale Milne wrote. Most character reactions, most actions not directly relevant to the plot, and all of Pooh's poetry disappears. What's left is walking around from house to house, trying different foods, and finally finding out that Tiggers love Roo's medicine. So I definitely agree: the shortness is a consequence of oral storytelling by memory.
You don't just tell a story once, though. You tell it again and again. And not just to people, but over in your head. Maybe it gets shorter, or maybe it gets longer - but you do have that automatic reviewing to notice things you forgot. And don't underestimate the ability of small children to come up with the "...but what happened to her mother in the tree?" questions.
(Answer: "She was happy that her child was finally safe and happy, and was able to be at peace," probably - I suspect that one isn't asked because it doesn't need to be. Fairy tales do have a sort of assumed background, which does a lot to fill in the things they leave out - I often suspect that part of why they seem sparse to us is that not all of that common background of knowledge and assumptions got passed down to us, so things that were obvious to the original audience don't remain so to the modern one.)
Have you run into the debate about the icelandic sagas? They're extremely long, with pretty clear character motivation; most of the family sagas occur multiple centuries before they were written down, and there's a debate about whether they were (per tradition) composed close to the events and preserved orally until written, or composed at the time of writing (and some details seem odd if the latter - there's one case where a detail in a saga matches up to a medical condition we now know about in a way we wouldn't expect them to have known, though that only requires that detail survives from close to the events, not the whole account) - though Iceland has very long winters.
At any rate, I'm less convinced that fairy tales are short because they can't fit in what a novel can, and the modern novel would be better. They're a different genre, and in some ways I think they can be stronger than a novel precisely because of the empty spaces. Sometimes things work better with less explanation.
But I enjoyed the essay.
(And I enjoyed Ella Enchanted - but it's a different kind of thing. In some ways it works precisely because it is constantly in tension with its source material - as do the large number of Tam Lins, one of which you reviewed in a different post. The fairytale framework lets the author tell the story with a preexisting knowledge of many plot elements that wouldn't usually be possible, and therefore use that preexisting knowledge to shape tension or curiosity, rather as stories built around prophecies or starting in medias res and then flashing back can - you know this one thing about what will happen, but what fits in around it?)
Another factor to consider is the psychologizing of stories that occurred in the nineteenth century, which was part of the psychologizing of the understanding of human nature starting with Freud. Not that writers were unconcerned with motivations and feelings before Freud. Those concerns go all the way back in literature, to Achilles sulking in his tent and Hamlet agonizing over his revenge for his father. But until the nineteenth century, the moral understanding of human nature was still dominant and the simple moral tale, concerned with doing the right thing, rather than explaining why people do the wrong thing, was still in favor. Most fairy tales are essentially moral fables, and like moral fables going all the way back to Aesop, they had no need to explore motives or feelings.
Excellent observations on the spare nature of these stories. I relate to the Old Testament reference, as I have often thought about questions and details left out by the text. The stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob raise almost more questions than they answer. The oral transmission of these stories over generations definitely explains some of the missing details.
I've sometimes told my children the story of "Tigger comes to the Woods and has breakfast" from memory. And it gets much shorter! Pretty much an outline of the tale Milne wrote. Most character reactions, most actions not directly relevant to the plot, and all of Pooh's poetry disappears. What's left is walking around from house to house, trying different foods, and finally finding out that Tiggers love Roo's medicine. So I definitely agree: the shortness is a consequence of oral storytelling by memory.
You don't just tell a story once, though. You tell it again and again. And not just to people, but over in your head. Maybe it gets shorter, or maybe it gets longer - but you do have that automatic reviewing to notice things you forgot. And don't underestimate the ability of small children to come up with the "...but what happened to her mother in the tree?" questions.
(Answer: "She was happy that her child was finally safe and happy, and was able to be at peace," probably - I suspect that one isn't asked because it doesn't need to be. Fairy tales do have a sort of assumed background, which does a lot to fill in the things they leave out - I often suspect that part of why they seem sparse to us is that not all of that common background of knowledge and assumptions got passed down to us, so things that were obvious to the original audience don't remain so to the modern one.)
Have you run into the debate about the icelandic sagas? They're extremely long, with pretty clear character motivation; most of the family sagas occur multiple centuries before they were written down, and there's a debate about whether they were (per tradition) composed close to the events and preserved orally until written, or composed at the time of writing (and some details seem odd if the latter - there's one case where a detail in a saga matches up to a medical condition we now know about in a way we wouldn't expect them to have known, though that only requires that detail survives from close to the events, not the whole account) - though Iceland has very long winters.
At any rate, I'm less convinced that fairy tales are short because they can't fit in what a novel can, and the modern novel would be better. They're a different genre, and in some ways I think they can be stronger than a novel precisely because of the empty spaces. Sometimes things work better with less explanation.
But I enjoyed the essay.
(And I enjoyed Ella Enchanted - but it's a different kind of thing. In some ways it works precisely because it is constantly in tension with its source material - as do the large number of Tam Lins, one of which you reviewed in a different post. The fairytale framework lets the author tell the story with a preexisting knowledge of many plot elements that wouldn't usually be possible, and therefore use that preexisting knowledge to shape tension or curiosity, rather as stories built around prophecies or starting in medias res and then flashing back can - you know this one thing about what will happen, but what fits in around it?)