Issue with re-reading book from the past *spoiler alert* Emily of New Moon

I thought it would be interesting to give the books of my youth another read, except as an adult. I used to read Anne of Green Gables, Emily of New Moon, and Little Women (to name a few) a couple to times a year. I wondered if anything would hit me differently reading them now as adult instead of a teenager. Maybe there was some subtle phrases or jokes I had missed or connections I didn't make as a teenager. Mostly, I wanted to see if those books still made me feel the same as they did when I read them back then.

I started with Emily of New Moon, by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Although Anne is more widely known, I felt more affinity to Emily and her willful naughtiness. I have to admit that I got sucked right back in and everything was just as I remembered it, at first. It was a little different reading about a child losing their parents at a young age as mother and I found myself seeing Emily more as one of my kids instead of me, the way I used to.

But one thing really stuck out to me. Spoiler alert to anyone who hasn't read these books yet. Stop reading if you haven't read it yet.

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I never really appreciated the um.......significance of Emily's relationship with Dean Priest. >!After he saves her from the cliff and they start talking, it's revealed that he's 36 years old. After a brief conversation with her, he decides that he is going to "wait for her", which she misunderstands as him meaning wait for her to be ready to go home. But he means romantically, if that's even the right word for it. She goes on to tell him that she wants to be an author, but she worries about the "love talk" because she's not sure what should be said. Dean assures her that he'll teach her when she gets older, even going as far to tell her not to look for another teacher.

Emily is 12 at this time. This 36 year old man is saying this to a 12 year old girl. Teenage me didn't see an issue with this. It just seemed a little odd, since he was so much older, but I knew sometimes certain people fell for older partners and the whole "love knows no age" or something. My aunt married a man 20 years older than her. But Emily is 12. It just really changed the whole tone of Dean's character, who I always felt sympathetically for, since he was lame and had been teased so much. But there's no way adult me could be ok with a 36 year old man deciding to wait for a 12 year old girl.<!

Has anyone else ever re-read a book from your past and found something you missed that really impacted how you felt about the story, or a character in it?