“OMG why doesn’t Rochester just WhatsApp Jane?”

In The Times, Melanie Reid wonders how technology may interfere with reading the classics:

Apropos my comments last week on how technology has pirated our vocabulary. A colleague tells me she was bewildered by a novel in which the main character picked up a tablet to make notes while she was on the (landline) phone. The book was written in the era of fax machines not of iPads. It took my colleague a moment to remember that a tablet used to be a pad of paper. I worry that classic literature may be terminally blighted in future. How will Gen Z ever read the misunderstandings between Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester without screaming: “OMG why doesn’t he just WhatsApp her?”

AnneBrontë.org discusses Anne's poem 'Retirement'.