It is a truth universally acknowledged that we don’t need ‘trigger warnings’ on Jane Austen

If you thought trigger warnings had gone too far, brace yourself for a new one – on Jane Austen.

That’s right, the University of Greenwich has seemingly taken it upon itself to add content warnings (CW) to Northanger Abbey, due to its portrayal of “sexism” and “gender stereotypes”. English literature students studying the book have also been warned about the “toxic relationships and friendships”, according to content notes seen by The Telegraph.

What is interesting, of course, is how furiously this misses the point. Northanger Abbey is a novel about a young woman, Catherine Morland, coming of age in the Regency period. She is naive, quixotic – and fascinated with gothic literature, which begins to bleed into her everyday life. More than that: the novel is itself a satire that wryly mocks gender roles in literature, with Austen writing at one key point: “A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can”. If you wanted to see an example of art imitating life, this is it.

Warning potential readers about the novel’s “sexism” in light of its themes is so naive to Austen’s subtleties as to appear eyewateringly obtuse – Catherine is herself achingly aware of the patriarchy; she is rejected for marriage and kicked out of the abbey by an overbearing man (General Tilney). She speaks her mind freely – transgressing social norms of the time that expected women to be meek and silent. Northanger Abbey could be seen as a feminist critique of the very gender structures that these trigger warnings are seeking to point out.

So, what is going on? It’s not the first time that classic texts have been slapped with warnings: the epic poem Beowulf received one relatively recently due to its depiction of “violence, blood and monsters”; and Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel Kidnapped was flagged by the University of Aberdeen for containing “murder, death, family betrayal” and (quelle surprise) “kidnapping”. Students at the same university were reportedly warned about Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar for its “sexist attitudes” and a plot which “centred on a murder”.

If you find yourself asking what has happened to nuance, you’re not alone. Surely a large part of the joy of an English literature degree is investigating the subtleties and nuances of classic works; unravelling and exploring (in the case of Northanger Abbey) the social structures of the 1800s, not having them signposted with a huge “CW” before embarking on its discovery. Doesn’t that entirely miss the point? Haven’t we learned anything from Catherine Morland?

Trigger warnings can undoubtedly be useful, sometimes – my colleague Harriet Williamson argues the case for them (in cases such as sexual violence) succinctly here. I have a serious phobia of a certain type of insect, and can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished a warning would pop up on screen or in the pages of a book to alert me when it’s time to look away. But a heavy-handed, top-down approach to the literary canon isn’t the way to go about it. We’re supposed to be encouraging independent thought and analysis – not painting the world by numbers.

I think there’s something we are missing here, and it’s serious: we need to give young people more credit. University students are between 18 and 21 – I’d be hard-pressed to think of a cohort more passionate, driven, articulate and hungry (for learning, as well as cheap student union cider). If the data is to be believed, Gen Alpha today isn’t binge-drinking (research shows that one in four young people are teetotal), taking drugs or loafing around lazily eating Pot Noodles in front of a Channel 4 soap, but out there at the gym, doing yoga, practicing mindfulness. They’re generation tech and (arguably) generation social justice, too – we could learn much from them, rather than directing the attitudes of what we assume they don’t already know. Trigger warnings for these kids feel completely unnecessary – and risks undermining them, too.

Young people aren’t “snowflakes”, and we need to stop treating them as such. They’re smart. Switched on. On the whole (though I admit we might need to approach things differently with some of them in light of Andrew Tate) they understand the world of trigger warnings and misogyny and gender nuances and racism and LGBT+ rights better than we do – it’s second nature to them, whereas it may have taken the rest of us (including those well-meaning academics) several years to catch up.

Whenever I am tempted to worry about the next generation, I look at my daughter. At 10, she and her friends are so effortlessly switched on that they switch seamlessly between “she/her” and “they/them” pronouns without giving it a second thought – and automatically correct those (invariably of the older generation) who get it wrong. The kids are alright; in fact, they’re so alright that I’d hazard we don’t really need to worry about trigger warnings at all. If there is problematic content, it will be obvious to them. Pointing it out only makes us look foolish and overbearing.

So let’s sit back and let them enjoy Northanger Abbey – or, indeed, pull it apart, if need be. Take it from Austen herself: “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”