For Kinder Education
English Literature Degrees Should Come With Trigger Warnings
My study shouldn’t trigger suicidal thoughts for the sake of artistic analogy.
My hands are shaking as I type out this article. I’m honestly upset I have to be here, and I’m angry that we are still having conversations about trigger warnings in books in the year 2021.
Let’s get the meat of the story out of the way.
I am a twenty-five-year-old female student who is in the last few months of an English Literature course. I use a website that has a trigger warning section in the reviews to track my books. This trigger warning section though imperfect is generally helpful; fellow readers submit the triggers. This, unfortunately, means that one of us has to be triggered first to warn the others.
I’ve survived 70% of my university course. For the majority of my course, there was no mention of rape or child abuse; in fact, many of the books featured hopeful love and female sexual awakening. These books were filled with consent and beautiful relationships if they featured anything sexual at all. However, of the last seven books I have to read, four of them feature rape as either a plot point or a literary device.
