SOURCE: Pickar, Gertrud Bauer. “‘Too Manly Is Your Spirit’: Annette von Droste-Hülshoff.” Rice University Studies 64 (winter 1978): 51-68.

In the following essay, Pickar finds that in her life and works Droste-Hülshoff identified with masculine positions, in contrast to the strongly traditional roles her family compelled her to assume. Pickar contends that, in her female characters, Droste-Hülshoff reveals a strong ambivalence and conflict over appropriate roles for women and the possibility of legitimate women's authorship.

In 1961, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (1797-1848) was included in the first volume of German Men of Letters, an honor which in the series' subsequent five volumes has been accorded only two other women.¹ It is rightfully bestowed upon her as the author of some of the finest poetry and narrative prose of the nineteenth century and as the first woman of literary stature in modern German literature. There is, moreover, an ironic...