Share:
6 October 2016
Lucinda Hobden, a Year 13 pupil at Malvern St James Girls’ School, is celebrating after winning third prize in a prestigious Cambridge University essay writing competition.
Run by Trinity Hall, The Peter Lawrence Essay Prize in Modern Languages gives students in Year 12, who are considering applying to university, an opportunity to write about foreign language literary or cinematic works and thus develop the independent study skills they need to succeed in this subject at A-level and university. The prize also encourages high-flying students to consider applying to Cambridge University by introducing them to the kind of work they would be doing there.
The essay title was ‘Cinema is a more powerful means than literature for transmitting a political message. Discuss’. Lucinda’s response was a comparison of the feminist force of Simone de Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe (1949) and Chantal Akerman’s film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975).
Lucinda commented, “When I first saw the title for the essay, I was a little flummoxed where to start with it. But as I considered it, I quickly became engrossed by the research. I didn’t expect to win any prize; it’s just a bonus to be rewarded for an essay I enjoyed writing anyway!”
This is the second time Lucinda has won a Cambridge University essay writing competition. In April 2016, by eloquently answering the question ‘Does Literary Criticism Do Us Any Good?’, Lucinda won Corpus Christi’s Christopher Marlowe prize in English.
