The subversion about women's rights and self determination aren't really why people like the book today though. Nor is it because of the subtle social clues oh high society that we just don't pick up, like the timing of their breakfast.

It's because the characters are so real, and their growth is them turning from a real person into an also real person, while being likeable (well except maybe for Darcy at first) all the way. They're also quite smart and funny along the way, even if most of the jokes are rather nuanced and hard to spot by modern eyes.

But honestly, I found the book extremely boring as well. They're excellent characters who do absolutely nothing interesting.

That's what I didn't like about Wharton's Age of Innocence, because I'm sure it was subversive in the 1920s, but reading it almost 100 years later it was just like "Oh, a woman flouts the rules of her rigid social class. Big fucking deal." I don't know what my HS English teacher was thinking assigning it and not really addressing it as a period piece, because the themes were really boring on their face.

I did enjoy Austen's Northanger Abbey in college though. I think we read it as an examination of the Gothic genre though, so it wasn't just reading it in a vacuum.