Style class not processed

[johnthad]

I have some HTML that includes the in the <style> element

    .grpdescr {
      font-size: 12pt;
      font-style: italic;
    }

In the HTML there is

    <br>DUNCAN, king of Scotland.<br>MALCOLM<br>DONALBAIN<br>
    <div class="grpdescr">...his sons.</div>
    <br>MACBETH<br>BANQUO<br>
    <div class="grpdescr">...generals of the king's army.</div>

But the SVG for grpdescr looks like

<text x="8" y="173" width="66" height="16" style="font-size:16px;font-weight:normal;font-variant:italic;font-family:Serif;fill:#000000;stroke:none">...his sons.</text>

when I would expect

<text x="8" y="173" width="66" height="12" style="font-size:12px;font-weight:normal;font-style:italic;font-family:Serif;fill:#000000;stroke:none">...his sons.</text>

I'm using 3.4 on the command line.