Typed from notes I'd taken a week ago while reading the aforementioned book, The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales:
Why are the stories so often about young people? Always a child or a youth as the focus. You could say that it's the same today, but I think it's safe to say that there are more modern stories about middle-aged people than fairy tales about them. I can't think of a fairy tale that has as its main character a person over 30. I'm sure they exist, but I can't think of any.
Since fairy tales are about such human things, everyone in every age can read, feel, and understand them. They deal with people from many classes, but they're not about "class warfare" or anything like that.
On the attitude fairy tale characters take to dwarves and dragons and stuff that doesn't exist in the real world: Maybe because everyone more or less believed in God? That's not to say everyone was a saint, but there were a lot less atheists. Medieval culture. Because they didn't have the science we do, people accepted religious/superstitious explanations for things, and it was therefore easier to suspend disbelief with these stories? Just brainstorming.
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