RE: MY FIRST CLASSIC: JANE EYRE!

What I find with older books is that it is not necessarily the complexity, but rather that the language has changed. Also, our vocabulary has shrunk considerably over the past century. It is strange and sometimes amusing to see the ways in which the language has changed. Example: In Jane Austen's Emma, a man "ejaculates" in Emma's ear. I had to read that passage twice because I had never seen the use of the word "ejaculate" to mean "make an exclamation." I have seen it many times since.