I happened to pick up a copy of MmeB - people in my building often leave discarded books in the lobby - and I figured I'd give it another try. This is probably at least my fourth time reading it, in futile attempts to grasp what's so great about it. But I somehow had the feeling that it might be different this time.
And it was. I think it may have been my reading of Fanny Burney, for instance, which led to a better understanding of how extraordinary Jane Austen was, and in turn to be more open to the standards of the time. I'll never love MmeB, partly because she's possibly the most unlikable novel-heroine I've run across, partly because by modern standards the book itself isn't that interesting. But I was finally able to start to appreciate the description of the minutiae and the views of the internal thoughts of a wide range of characters, even if I can't be stirred by her wild passions. And I was better able to appreciate the humor and irony, which I was probably too impatient to notice much before.
Too bad that I'm so dense that it took me so long.