Again, you don't live in that world. The writer and his audience did. If you can't meet it halfway, or at least allow for it, you're going to miss everything...

Again, you don't live in that world. The writer and his audience did. If you can't meet it halfway, or at least allow for it, you're going to miss everything... and that's your fault, not the author's. It doesn't matter at all how it reads with a thoroughly modern mind.