University criticised after slapping classic Thomas Hardy novel Jude The Obscure with a trigger warning as it could ‘upset’ students with its adult themes | CPT PPP Coverage

A university has been criticised for issuing a ‘trigger warning’ for Thomas Hardy’s novel Jude The Obscure.

English literature students studying a module called Sex, Scandal And Sensation In Victorian Literature at the University of Exeter have been warned Hardy’s 1895 novel has the potential to ‘upset’ because of its adult themes.

The warning, a copy of which has been obtained by the MoS under freedom of information laws, states: ‘Jude The Obscure contains subjects students may find upsetting, including sexual coercion, murder and suicide.’

But last night Oscar-winning dramatist Julian Fellowes said: ‘The difficulty of trigger warnings is that they pre-suppose that the student body is emotionally immature. I prefer to believe that anyone qualified to study at a university is sufficiently adult to explore and assess works of great literature for themselves.’

Some Victorian critics took offence at Hardy’s depiction of sex, marriage and the Church. One called the novel ‘Jude The Obscene’, while the Bishop of Wakefield burned his copy.

Hardy’s novel is one of two works on the course which have their own specific warning.

Students are also warned that the anonymous 1893 pornographic novel Teleny which is also known as The Reverse of the Medal contains: ‘graphic depictions of sex, including rape, incest, and other subjects that students may find upsetting.’

Other works on the module, which include Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth, Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and Wilkie Collins’s The Women in White, are covered by a general warning which applies to the entire module and which states: ‘please be advised that some of the material on this module may be upsetting, including representations of graphic violence and explicit sex.’

But it is the warning applied to Hardy’s Jude the Obscure which has raised eyebrows.

The book, which was published in 1895 and is the author’s last completed novel tells the story of Jude Fawley, an idealistic working-class stonemason and who dreams of becoming a scholar.

Fawley’s dreams of a new life are, however, hampered by his attraction to two very different women.

They are the scheming and duplicitous Arabella Donn, who he marries twice, and his free-thinking cousin Sue Bridehead, who he lives with outside wedlock.

Jude has children with both women, but his son with Arabella, who is nicknamed Little Father Time, ends up killing himself and his two step siblings.

Mark Chutter, the Academic Director of the Thomas Hardy Society said University of Exeter had been naive to apply the warning.

He said Hardy had been ‘hurt’ by the criticism surrounding the work, adding: ‘He loved a paradox so I do understand the need to safeguard students at all costs, but this must not undermine or detract from their love for Literature or deter them from reading this classic.’

A spokesperson for the University of Exeter said: ‘The university of Exeter provides the information so that students know that Hardy’s novel Jude the Obscure, contains subjects that they may find upsetting, including sexual coercion, murder and suicide.’

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