Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
You are a Finn right? It's worth noting that the a core part of "English" education in America has been reading the classics, so we do get more practice with the more archaic style. This serves to expand vocabularies, recognize more styles of English communication, and to understand where some words and cultural references come from (I'm looking at you Billy S).
If your primary experience with English is dryer teaching English or technical writing some literature will absolutely be a bit challenging to read, but much of it was more or less lowbrow at the time and it is expected that an "educated" person in the U.S. be able to read these with an excess of assistance.
Separately, many English speaking people will have a fluency with Victorian social norms that will puzzling to people from outside milieus.
Probably your struggle is as much vocabulary as it is missing cultural context.
EDIT: An earlier version of this comment had misremembered OP's country of origin. Apologies for all involved and for my dead dignity.
Jane Austen was not a victorian writer, and he's Finnish anyways.
I don't know that she's a popular part of the American curriculum, either- Shakespeare makes a strong showing in the better programs, and everyone reads Huck Finn(The American novel). The shorter works(Where the Red Fern Grows, The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird...) are pretty common. Younger grades have modern literature written almost specifically to be read in English class. In high school, I remember a bit of Steinbeck, more Dickens than I would have preferred, but perhaps a quarter of the curriculum being Shakespeare.
Yeah def mixed him up with someone else.
Doesn't need to be literally Victorian or Regency for random English bullshit and Amero-English bullshit to be an appropriate description of context that is skipped off of.
And agree with the characterization of Austen being less popular than Shakespeare etc, but it remains pretty popular with women and girls who read which means the influence is there.
And the point remains: it's not pure highfalutin, and educated people will communicate in that way at times and American students are supposed to be presented the opportunity to develop understanding of those references. It's much harder for non-English speakers to get the exposure (especially in the formative years) to make this stuff easily understandable.
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Accusing a Finn of being Indian...
Dang must have had 'em mixed up with someone else - point remains about it being a first language vs. not a first language expectations thing.
Always going to be harder coming in.
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