Diminishing pleasure

I returned to Jane Eyre after a quarter of a century. Sad to say the novel didn't age well in my mind.

Of course I am aware that the work is over a century and a half old, and I know that I need to take the peculiarities of that time in stride. Still, arcane social ideals and ethnocentrism typical of the age apart, the style of the novel was what turned me away. Repeated breaking of the fourth wall and undisciplined use of tense apparently have become something I really dislike, and this is a pity as I recall liking the novel very much when I read it first.

In a sense I guess my personal development as a reader mirrors the development of authors as a group these last 150 years.