SOURCE: Wells, Larry D. “Indeterminacy as Provocation: The Reader's Role in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff's Die Judenbuche.” Modern Language Notes 94, no. 3 (April 1979): 475-92.

In the following essay, Wells maintains that the indeterminacy, or ambiguity, of Die Judenbuche functions to engage and guide the reader's response to the text. Wells gives special attention to the main character's suicide in describing how Droste-Hülshoff compels readers to consider her critique of social and religious norms.

Upon its installment publication in Cotta's Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser (1842), Droste's Die Judenbuche met with only modest success. Yet by the end of the century this tale of anti-Semitism, theft, murder, and retribution in the backwoods of eighteenth-century Westphalia had captivated a large audience of readers and literary scholars and established itself permanently as one of the generally acknowledged masterpieces of German literature.¹ Much of the story's fascination stems from puzzling uncertainties in the...