Judges' Comments

Hannah Hicks’ essay, “The Changing Element: Beauty and Transition in Jane Austen’s Persuasion,” examines the role of beauty, in the sense of human physical attractiveness, in Austen’s construction of her characters. While personal vanity and an excessive interest in the beauty or ugliness of others is a foible that Austen mercilessly satirizes in some of the novel’s memorable comic characters such as Sir Walter Elliot, beauty, as Hannah shows, is also a quantity that Austen takes seriously, and uses as “a symbol of stability in the self” (5). In her essay, Hannah effectively and stylishly demonstrates how perceived beauty, this apparently trivial measure of a person’s worth—a measure over-valued by trivial people—can take on a new, graver meaning in the character trajectory of Austen’s heroine Anne, a person of deep reflectiveness and convictions who is forced to seek happiness in a superficial world. 

Among the many strengths of Hannah’s essay are the clarity and boldness of her deceptively simple thesis, which is assertively stated by the end of the first paragraph, and her confidence in dealing with the critical sources she incorporates into the essay. Hannah uses sources selectively, but very successfully: her sources are relatively few, but exactly on point for her topic, ensuring that her use of criticism seems authentically motivated and well-integrated into her paper, not tacked on to fulfill a requirement. She also effectively maintains control of her dialogue with these critics, acknowledging the critical discourse while keeping her own voice and her own points in the foreground. The literary-analytical skill of close reading and the research skill of wide reading are in admirable balance in this impressive essay.  

In “The Great Escape: Finding an Ambiguous and Unique Identity in a Binary World,” Madeline Wood invites the reader on an intellectual journey into the writing of Argentine playwright, screenwriter and novelist Manuel Puig (1932 - 1990). Her paper explores how “the dueling gender dynamics” of Puig’s youth are embodied in the protagonists of his play, The Kiss of the Spider Woman (1983). While there exist substantial studies of the dialogues between the outwardly antagonistic characters of Molina, a gay man whose passion is the silver screen, and Valentin, a macho revolutionary, inside their jail cell, Madeline takes the discourse a step further. Her sourced paper is a very original study of how these dialogues create a metaphorical space in which Valentin and Molina can question their society’s binary definitions of gender. In essence, Madeline shows how it is not only the physical space of a shared cell that prompts the characters to “rise above unnatural societal values… to embrace their true, innate identities,” but what they talk about – storylines from 1940s cinema featuring sensuous and powerful “femme fatals” – that catalyzes their escape from the mental prison of constructed ideals of manhood and masculinity.  

Madeline consulted a wealth of sources in order to learn about her topic and craft her own ideas. Her bibliography includes literary criticism, author interviews, historiography, biography and memoir. She dove into her research with gusto and did an exemplary job of identifying, evaluating, integrating, and correctly citing her sources. In her paper, Madeline dialogues with her sources, engaging in an exchange of ideas upon the page. Her writing clearly makes distinctions between her own thoughts and words and those of her sources. Madeline also eagerly embraced the revision process. She taught me and her classmates about continually “putting pressure” on her arguments in order to refine them. At the point where most writers would consider their paper “done”, she would return to her paper once or twice more to ask difficult questions and consider counterarguments. This dedication to engaging in deep thought and rendering nuanced ideas clearly and convincingly in a well-organized paper makes Madeline a stand-out young scholar. In the last sentence of her paper, she writes that Manuel Puig’s play “begins a conversation with a language of his own creation.” In a sense, Madeline does the same here. She steps into a conversation that scholars of The Kiss of the Spider Woman have engaged in for the past three decades, and builds upon their scholarship to offer something new. She uses her language in a deliberate and unique fashion to take the conversation a long step further, inviting readers on a “great escape” toward engrossing intellectual encounters.