There are trigger warnings and trigger warnings! But I never thought that they would evolve like this.
Now clearly to any insecure Christian, Darwin is a great threat along with Marx and Freud, but I never thought the breakaway university of Cambridge would warn potential readers of Darwin’s correspondence that they might find his letters “upsetting or offensive”.
But they do, as this screenshot from the Darwin Correspondence Project makes it clear.
for example
https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-8327.xml&query=j%20d%20hooker
With the correspondence now complete in 30 volumes or on line, I will admit to owning half of them and have used them extensively in my own research. I focus on the early volumes as most of my research is on Darwin’s active work in geology from 1831 to 1842 in Wales and Shropshire, but I have read many volumes especially for his comments on religion, and as a vicar they should have triggered me!
I find his correspondence fascinating whether on his geology, other sciences, the development of his ideas on evolution, his family life, his social life, relationships with others especially scientists like Sedgwick, Lyell, hooker and Huxley. In over thirty years I have never fainted in shock, or needed medication to calm me down. Often they are plain boring but like an ore body contain nuggets of pure gold. Tracing through an idea of his you can reconstruct his thoughts, and often fill in details which are not apparent from his published writings.
As well as reading them seriously, I found much to amuse me, as when he called Lyell a heretic for not believing in cleavage (that in slates and not in living apes), he once reported that he hadn’t farted for a whole day , or his delightful descriptions of his first girl-friend, Fanny Mostyn Owen, who shares a birthday with me (but not the year) and her mortal remains were six feet or so below me in the crypt of St Mary’s Chirk when I led services there whilst vicar. Here is an example
I only hope I may appease you both & excuse this scrawl but I have such a Pen and besides never could write like any thing but what I am, a Housemaid so dr. Postillion ever yr| F Owen
Burn this as soon as read—or tremble at my fury and revenge—
I never found anything ableist or homophobic as I don’t think either topic came up. On race he was scarcely a racist. He was an ardent abolitionist and was scathing about slavery in both Americas. On race he was ambivalent and it jars today, particularly in his expression on race. Perhaps he had a lofty and paternalistic view, but that was always with concern rather than prejudice or discrimination. It is easy to read into some of his statements.
He was hardly sexist, although his views are not the same as those today. His jottings on whether he should get married in 1838 were more humorous than sexist, even when he wrote a wife is “better than a dog anyhow”! If Emma ever saw it I cannot see that she would have been upset. She would have given a lively response. As Edna Healey showed in her biography of Emma, Charles and Emma had a delightful relationship, despite loss of children and his illness. The Darwins and Wedgwoods were very progressive for their times.
But why is there a content warning?
I would have thought that most people referring to this site would do so out of an interest in Darwin and thus have some idea about him, whether as a scientific hero, or if a fundamentalist, the devil incarnate who gave us evilution! Unless they were motivated to learn about Darwin, they would would soon give up in boredom! Further any reader would need to have a modicum of scholarship and so should be used to ideas which they do not agree with or even find unpalatable. Apart from that everyone, unless they live in a hermetically sealed cocoon, will hear of murders and wars in the news. In fact watching the news on the fighting in Ukraine and Gaza is far more distressing than anything you can read in Darwin’s correspondence, including his horrific descriptions of slavery in Latin America.
It is absolutely right to disagree, reject, or be offended by what you read, but by the age of sixteen one needs to have a certain resilience so you don’t get easily upset as the warning is concerned about. Both home and school should have developed a certain level of resilience.
To give a content warning means that the library expects many readers to be so sensitive that they will be triggered. I cannot help asking how can they be in such a vulnerable position and considering that few would not have left school.
But then there seems to be an industry of trigger warnings, be it over Shakespeare, To Kill a Mockingbird, and so many other things in the curriculum.
This warning is simply going to far and perhaps Cambridge University need to look for offence which is truly offence………
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Peddling and Scaling God and Darwin 