Winning Essays for 2003
2003 Essay Topic: The Importance of Home and Family in Jane Austen's Life and Works
In all of Jane Austen's fiction, home and family play a significant though complex role, sometimes providing nurture, sometimes (even simultaneously) a sense of constriction. Explore the importance of home and/or family in Austen's novels or juvenilia. Possible angles might include:
- The ways Austen uses siblings to further plot, character development, and theme;
- The ways the needs of courting couples might conflict with the demands of the families to which they belong;
- Austen's response to the images of home and family portrayed by other writers; or
- Her representation of vexed social, economic, legal, or political issues through her images of home and family.
High School Division
First Prize Winner: Talia S. Goldman, Baltimore, MD
Essay: Fanny Price: A Journey to Discover Home
Mentor: Mrs. Nancy Leaderman, English teacher, Beth Tfiloh High School, Baltimore
Second Prize Winner: Elizabeth J. Linder, Sacramento, CA
Essay: Perspectives Transformed, Viewpoints Revised
Undergraduate Division
First Prize Winner: Sarah K. Green, Providence, RI
Essay: "A state of alteration, perhaps of improvement": New Social Structures in Persuasion
Mentor: Professor Amanda Gilroy, English Department, Brown University, Providence
Second Prize Winner (tie): Daniella A. Cheslow
Essay: Dearest Catherine, Beware How You Give Your Heart
and: Shannon F. Ringvelski
Essay: Exiled from Pemberley: Finding Home in Pride and Prejudice
Graduate Division
First Prize Winner: Ashley L. Combest, Greenville, MS
Essay: Definition and Redefinition: Finding a Home in Mansfield Park
Mentor: Dr. Susan Allen Ford, Delta State University, Cleveland, MS
Second Prize Winner: Jennifer M. Lane
Essay: Jane Austen's Domesticated Naval Heroes in Persuasion