Putney students excel in English competitions

Honourable mentions, merits and prize-giving events: it has been a successful term for students entering prestigious competitions for various styles of writing.

Floods of praise for Eleanor

Eleanor R (Year 12) received an honourable mention after entering an essay on Jane Eyre into a competition judged by academics at Queen Mary University of London in which she proposed the original thesis that the symbol of water within the novel deserved equal attention to that of the far more discussed fire. The judges praised Eleanor’s writing for being ‘arresting’ and characterised by ‘meticulous and inspiring analysis.’ The introduction of Eleanor’s essay gives a sense of her rapidly flowing argument:

In Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre, water is a significant symbol, which occurs in forms such as rain, tears, and ice. It is often used in direct opposition to fire, in order to demonstrate the warring elements of Jane Eyre’s identity: composure and self-control, in contrast with passion and vitality. However, when presented in conjunction with the relationship between Jane and Mr Rochester, the image of water gains a new relevance. Water’s calming influence is at first necessary to temper both the passion of their relationship and the destructive influence of Bertha Mason, but at the end of the novel it becomes a renewing influence, allowing Jane’s relationship with Rochester to transcend previous obstacles.

A novel depiction of women

If Eleanor was interested in the elements, Clemmie P (Year 12), in an essay written for the Woolf Essay Prize (a competition run by Newnham College, Cambridge), explored far more human matters. Clemmie’s fantastically rich and ambitious essay compared the historical actuality of women’s lives in the eighteenth century with their fictional representation in novels by Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson and Eliza Haywood. Clemmie argued that within the novel, women operate within an unstable sexual economy wherein sexual attractiveness offers opportunities to speculate and accumulate, and ultimately drive their own narrative. In a particularly brilliant passage, Clemmie compares Defoe’s treatment of his female heroines with the male hero of his first novel, Robinson Crusoe:

Crusoe’s independence is inherently non-sexual, grounded in labour and property, with unfluctuating permanence as he colonises an island having washed ashore on it after a shipwreck. This assertion of oneself into setting, mocks the socially fragile standing of Moll and Roxana, who cannot conquer anyone, for their autonomy has already been conquered by society. Crusoe builds upon a stable selfhood, his redemption from oppressive ways as a plantation owner and trust in God is rewarded, whilst redemption cannot be offered to women without some form of depreciation of reputation, as they construct provisional selves through performing in a sexual economy.

Wins at Wimbledon

Putney students dominated the Wimbledon BookFest Young Writers competition with two students winning awards for their stories on the theme of ‘Legends’. Bella T (Year 9) was awarded a merit, while Brooke H (Year 9) was only one place off the entire competition win, with her story being given the runner-up prize. Brooke will be invited to a prize-giving event at New Wimbledon Theatre, where she will receive her anthology and certificate.

A quick note to finish on

While the stories of the writers studied by Eleanor and Clemmie all took place over multiple volumes and many hundreds of pages, Emma T (Year 10) was awarded a merit in a Young Writers competition for her story written in only a hundred words. Her story, 'The Changeling Child', will be published in book called Grim Tales – Cursed Realities, a copy of which will be preserved in the British Library forever. Given the stories brevity, it appears in its miniscule and mysterious entirety below:

The changeling child was returned, thirteen inches taller, ambrosia-sick, with sawdust on his tongue. He stumbled on the threshold of the house that he was born in, caught in the doorway.

His old mother ran to him, no name to call (the fairies had asked for it, and the fairies get what they want), forced an iron necklace round his throat and stale bread in his pocket. He had left fairy gold in that pocket that morning, taking home his apprentice’s wages, and hand in his shirt, he felt for it, but there was nothing there except the ash-tasting air.