Northanger Abbey given trigger warning over ‘disturbing’ sexism
READING novels causes anguish for the naive heroine of Northanger Abbey – and students studying the book may be similarly afflicted, a university believes.
Academics have issued a trigger warning for Jane Austen’s work because it depicts “gender stereotypes”.
The 1817 novel about a callow young woman’s coming of age in Regency Britain has been deemed potentially upsetting by the University of Greenwich.
Students of English literature are alerted to the “sexism” in Northanger Abbey, according to content notes seen by The Daily Telegraph, and warned that the 19th-century satire contains “toxic relationships and friendships”.
The claims are made in the content warning for Austen’s work, despite the author being regarded as an early feminist who rebelled against gender roles in a literary world dominated by men.
The book is taught as part of Greenwich’s Gothic literature module, which itself comes with an umbrella warning that course content contains “elements that students might find disturbing”.
Northanger Abbey tells the story of Catherine Morland, an innocent figure whose reading of Gothic novels leads her to suspect her suitor’s father of being a murderous widower, in a plotline intended to mock the macabre literature of the day.
Catherine gradually learns about the world through this ordeal, being rejected for marriage owing to her lack of money by an overbearing patriarch, witnessing seducer Captain Tilney ruin her friend Isabella, and in discussions with her love interest, Henry Tilney.
She defers to him in keeping with the gender roles of 19th-century young women, as he makes observations about the sexes, including claiming of women that “nature has given them so much that they never find it necessary to use more than half ”.
However, he also states that in matters of taste “excellence is pretty fairly divided between the sexes”.
The fact that Austen ironically and humorously handles gender roles in Northanger Abbey, and her other works, has led to claims that the Greenwich trigger warning is inappropriate.
Dennis Hayes, professor of education at the University of Derby and director of the campaign group Academics for Academic Freedom, said: “Through her great wit expressed through her characters, Jane Austen offends everyone in her novels. She is the mistress of offence. That’s why we love her work.
“Students love her too. But some academics still seem to think their students are snowflakes and need coddling.”
A spokesman for the University of Greenwich said: “Content warnings were first used in July 2021, in response to student requests relayed to the teaching team via their student representatives. It was agreed they should be included in reading lists so that students would be able to take them into account before encountering each text.”
Last year, students reading English at the University of Greenwich were warned that Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner contains “animal death” and “supernatural possession”. Now, they are being told they will run into “toxic relationships and friendships” in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. One might have thought that this 18th century parody of the gothic novel had useful lessons for youthful minds – read widely, don’t rely excessively on others, don’t let your imagination run away with you – while offering entertaining insights into Regency society. But if encountering toxic relationships is really so shocking to today’s undergraduates, let’s hope they never accidentally stream The White Lotus. Should these delicates glimpse Love Island while flicking through channels, they will surely never recover.