mummabubs When you study English literature at university level you should never be told that a work "means" XYZ - it's all up for debate! Even at A level students are introduced to the idea that there are multiple interpretations of any given text.
By the fist year of an undergraduate degree at the very latest (really by the second year of A level) students should be very much aware that the question of whether authorial intent matters is one of the endless rumbling debates, with most literary theoriest arguing that the text stands alone and authorial intent is not definitive (so it doesn't necessarily matter what the author says it's about, it's about whatever you can convincingly argue it's about... or it isn't...)
There are lots of schools of literary criticism, most of which overlap with psychology or other social sciences.
Obviously most of it is bollocks, but quite fun.
Nobody who has managed to graduate with a decent degree in English literature should ever come out with the phrase "we were told the book is about X " though. The entire point of the degree is to read 97 different critical standpoints and write essays arguing the validity of one over another, just for fun.
The way to get a first, by the way, is to argue convincingly that absolutely everything ever written is about sex, religion and death. Especially works that appear not to be about those things at all.