Readability

The first thing any modern reader will recognize is the prose. Austen writes like much of her contemporaries, which means long, verbose sentences that weigh heavier in aesthetics than purpose. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing or that it reduces the quality of the novel–it’s just an element of the era–but for a modern reader, it makes it near impossible to understand.

For the most part, modern readers have an incredibly short attention span. Movies and novels today focus on short, impactful moments in their depictions, which progresses the plots quickly. We’ve been inundated with this short attention span, and reading any Austen novel–or really any romantic novel–requires an incredible amount of our under-developed patience.

For example, let’s look at the first sentence of chapter II:

“In addition to what has been already said of Catherine Morland’s personal and mental endowments, when about to be launched into all the difficulties and dangers of a six weeks’ residence in Bath, it may be stated, for the readers more certain information, lest the following pages should otherwise fail of giving any idea of what her character is meant to be; that her heart was affectionate, her disposition cheerful and open, without conceit or affectation of any kind–her manners just removed from the awkwardness and shyness of a girl; her person pleasing, and, when in good looks, pretty–and her mind about as ignorant and uniformed as the female mind at seventeen usually is.”

There is no reason to write like this by today’s expectations. Instead, a modern reader would expect this: “Catherine Morland was affectionate, cheerfully open, and without conceit or affectation. She was not awkward nor shy, and many found her pleasing and pretty if she wished. However, despite all of this, she was as ignorant as a 17 year old girl would be.”

This says the same thing. As language has modernized, it made us less keen to what Romantic authors are saying in their writing. For me, I had to Sparknote everything because the reading was too convoluted to grasp; my mind would continually wander because it took a minute of reading only to be rewarded with information that should’ve taken 20 seconds to reveal. This novel’s diction and syntax are outdated and have not held up well–so I think. As well, it’s a parody, which means the humor that was apparent to her audience when she wrote it is not apparent to us now. It takes research to understand the humor fully, which takes away from the humor in general. And because this parody is of gothic literature from her time, it requires we know all the books she mentions before we could fully comprehend the parody.