Trigger warnings and the teaching of literature
The University of Chester has placed a “trigger warning” on Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (“Sorceror’s Stone” in US publication), saying that this first and simplest of the series might cause “difficult conversations about gender, race, sexuality, class, and identity.” This is pure rubbish, of course, intended to isolate the author J.K. Rowling for not toeing the line on trans ideology rather than teach her work.
To actually teach an author’s work requires confronting all those categories and more which arise from the social context the author lived in and the literary context the author created in the text under study. This is obvious when applied to, say, Shakespeare. Unless we teach about Shakespeare’s times (and language), nobody gets the jokes! Moreover, take, for an example, the character of Shylock. Does Shakespeare employ antisemitic tropes in order to gibe at Shylock or to critique the image of the Jew in his audience’s minds? The Merchant of Venice can be read either way. Perhaps this is part of why Shakespeare is such a great writer: you cannot reduce his plays to what side he was on, even if you could determine what that side was.
Coming forward in time, it is obvious that teaching Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice requires more than talking about Charlotte Bronte or Jane Austen as (female) novelists and their place in Victorian letters. The mass of cultural detail in the novels and the way it is talked about require the reader to understand that things were very different in 19th Century England from 21st Century America. How one found a spouse, what determined prosperity or poverty, what people did for fun, even the way people dated letters have to be explained for the stories to make sense, at least beyond the superficial level. And usually teachers labor to make those explanations. It is telling that many people read A Christmas Carol or watch adaptations thereof, while assuming that the novel can be understood as if contemporary. We thus miss all the important social clues that Dickens gives us and only think we understand Scrooge and the Cratchitts. Too often, the Scrooge we think we know is only a cartoon, and our inability to see him in his context robs us of a true understanding of the character.
One could also examine racial epithets in the work of contemporary writers. Rudyard Kipling was an imperialist and a bit of a Jingoist, no doubt, but while he might have condescended to his non-white characters at times, he usually refrained from ugly language about them -- except in his otherwise excellent short story, “How the Leopard Got His Spots” in Just So Stories. There, a casual use of the n-word floats like a lone turd in the punchbowl. The idea that “nobody” would have taken exception to it in his day does not mean that it was really okay in his day, and it is certainly not okay in our day. But it is one-time, only. Compare this to Mark Twain’s constant use of the n-word in Huckleberry Finn, which has caused so many academics heartburn. Ah, but Twain is deliberately telling a story which emphasizes the humanity and dignity of the main Black character. He is also reproducing pretty exactly the dialect and forms of discourse of his youth back in Hannibal, Missouri and along the Mississippi generally. Offensive as the language is to us today, it is not gratuitous, and it is certainly neither condescending nor pejorative in Twain’s usage, even if it is in that of his characters. What do we do with Kipling and Twain? Why, we teach them, of course. Which means rather than issuing trigger warnings, we explain why and how these ugly terms were used, and why the use of the n-word in “How the Leopard” is gratuitous, while its use in Huck Finn is not. And also why both Kipling and Twain are literary geniuses, even if you disapprove of their attitudes or even of them as people.
Putting books on approved or disapproved lists is not teaching them. Still less is putting writers on approved or disapproved lists of any use to anybody. Lord Byron was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” but “Don Juan” is still worth reading; and while Thomas Bowdler meant well, his attempt to make Shakespeare wholesome for family reading has merely rendered his name a byword for a kind of literary bungling that only people with bees in their bonnets can appreciate: someone like the intersectionalists of today, who fret over the “difficult conversations” provoked by a children’s novel by J.K. Rowling.
To actually teach an author’s work requires confronting all those categories and more which arise from the social context the author lived in and the literary context the author created in the text under study. This is obvious when applied to, say, Shakespeare. Unless we teach about Shakespeare’s times (and language), nobody gets the jokes! Moreover, take, for an example, the character of Shylock. Does Shakespeare employ antisemitic tropes in order to gibe at Shylock or to critique the image of the Jew in his audience’s minds? The Merchant of Venice can be read either way. Perhaps this is part of why Shakespeare is such a great writer: you cannot reduce his plays to what side he was on, even if you could determine what that side was.
Coming forward in time, it is obvious that teaching Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice requires more than talking about Charlotte Bronte or Jane Austen as (female) novelists and their place in Victorian letters. The mass of cultural detail in the novels and the way it is talked about require the reader to understand that things were very different in 19th Century England from 21st Century America. How one found a spouse, what determined prosperity or poverty, what people did for fun, even the way people dated letters have to be explained for the stories to make sense, at least beyond the superficial level. And usually teachers labor to make those explanations. It is telling that many people read A Christmas Carol or watch adaptations thereof, while assuming that the novel can be understood as if contemporary. We thus miss all the important social clues that Dickens gives us and only think we understand Scrooge and the Cratchitts. Too often, the Scrooge we think we know is only a cartoon, and our inability to see him in his context robs us of a true understanding of the character.
One could also examine racial epithets in the work of contemporary writers. Rudyard Kipling was an imperialist and a bit of a Jingoist, no doubt, but while he might have condescended to his non-white characters at times, he usually refrained from ugly language about them -- except in his otherwise excellent short story, “How the Leopard Got His Spots” in Just So Stories. There, a casual use of the n-word floats like a lone turd in the punchbowl. The idea that “nobody” would have taken exception to it in his day does not mean that it was really okay in his day, and it is certainly not okay in our day. But it is one-time, only. Compare this to Mark Twain’s constant use of the n-word in Huckleberry Finn, which has caused so many academics heartburn. Ah, but Twain is deliberately telling a story which emphasizes the humanity and dignity of the main Black character. He is also reproducing pretty exactly the dialect and forms of discourse of his youth back in Hannibal, Missouri and along the Mississippi generally. Offensive as the language is to us today, it is not gratuitous, and it is certainly neither condescending nor pejorative in Twain’s usage, even if it is in that of his characters. What do we do with Kipling and Twain? Why, we teach them, of course. Which means rather than issuing trigger warnings, we explain why and how these ugly terms were used, and why the use of the n-word in “How the Leopard” is gratuitous, while its use in Huck Finn is not. And also why both Kipling and Twain are literary geniuses, even if you disapprove of their attitudes or even of them as people.
Putting books on approved or disapproved lists is not teaching them. Still less is putting writers on approved or disapproved lists of any use to anybody. Lord Byron was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” but “Don Juan” is still worth reading; and while Thomas Bowdler meant well, his attempt to make Shakespeare wholesome for family reading has merely rendered his name a byword for a kind of literary bungling that only people with bees in their bonnets can appreciate: someone like the intersectionalists of today, who fret over the “difficult conversations” provoked by a children’s novel by J.K. Rowling.