Victorian novel gets trigger warning over ‘classism’ that may upset modern students
ACADEMICS have red-flagged an agenda-setting novel revealing the horrors of life in Victorian Britain – as it might distress undergraduates.
Staff at the University of Warwick warned students the graphic content of Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1848 masterpiece Mary Barton may upset them.
The work did much to alert the public to contemporary prostitution, poverty and typhus. But tutors at the university, among the best in the UK, said the topics and “extreme classism” may torment current students.
Free speech campaigners claimed institutions were pandering to a cosseted generation too easily-offended.
Last night a Free Speech Union spokesman group said: “If Warwick University’s English Department believes its students are so fragile they may not be able to cope with novels by Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte Bronte, wouldn’t it be better to advise them to stay in their rooms for three years?”
Gaskell depicts the harsh reality of everyday Victorian life but Warwick’s content advisory warns “misogyny recurs throughout” and tells of “references to bleak and violent deaths”.
Mary Barton, her debut novel, was set in Manchester between 1839 and 1842. It deals with the hardships faced by the working class, plus the gulf between rich and poor.
The book mentions “alienation between the different classes” and feelings of “hatred to the one class and keen sympathy with the other”. It is seen as a classic depiction of the period and is a go-to text for English literature students.
The warning is one of a number issued at the university, which has rebranded “trigger warnings” as “content notes” over fears that the word “trigger” might itself be considered too “provocative”.
Charlotte Bronte’s 1853 novel Villette has a content warning over “strong xenophobia and religious intolerance”. The book, about an English teacher living in Europe, is also said to contain “unsettling representations of mental illness”.
The use of such warnings on classic novels has been criticised by sociology professor Frank Furedi of Kent University. He said the advice was “demeaning” and claimed that fellow academics “have very low expectations of students” if they feel they cannot cope with the content of certain novels. Prof Furedi added: “Trigger warnings are a moralistic enterprise that is constantly looking for new targets to
warn about.” Warnings have also been applied to works including Shakespeare, Old English poem Beowulf and Thomas Hardy novels.
The University of Warwick said departments could issue guidance if felt necessary: “We fully respect our colleagues’ right to exercise their academic freedom in this way, but the practice remains rare within the university – with less than one per cent of our overall curriculum including any content guidance.”