Why is Victorian Literature so hard to read?
I can understand your frustration, however, the best thing to do is to ignore the unknown words and keep reading. Just try to understand the central meaning of each paragraph. I did this with Frankenstein first (which is before Victorian era) as I wanted to enrich my vocabulary (I am Greek and had only a lower certificate of knowledge in english). I didn’t know half the words of every paragraph but I didn’t care. It took me most of the summer. But when I read the book translated after a year, I realized I had grasped correctly the whole meaning. My favorite novel of all times is “Jane Eyre” that belongs to that era. It is not so difficult to read because it is interesting, although the vocabulary is very rich and more complex than Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”. Don’t miss the opportunity to read both novels even in a simplified version. They are totally worth the effort. So don’t reject a whole era because of the vocabulary or difficult style involved.
