Emma question

If I understand this correctly, students are complaining that the books they are assigned are too long or that they are not given enough time to finish reading them before class. I have noticed that school exams now seem to focus on selected extracts of plays, novels, etc, obviating the need to read the entire book. The modern tendency for the media to present everything in bite size pieces, as well as the 'dumbing down' apparent in tv dramatizations of classics like 'War and Peace', probably doesn't help. Many years ago at college I read the unabridged 'Clarissa', by Samuel Richardson, which came in at around 1400 pages in four volumes. I imagine a modern televised dramatization would come in at about 3 hours, including commercial breaks...