SOURCE: Lietina-Ray, Maruta. “Annette von Droste-Hülshoff and Critics of Die Judenbuche.” In Woman as Mediatrix: Essays on Nineteenth-Century European Women Writers, edited by Avriel H. Goldberger, pp. 123-31. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987.

In the following essay, Lietina-Ray discusses the prevailing sexism of criticism on Droste-Hülshoff and Die Judenbuche. Lietina-Ray observes that criticism on Droste-Hülshoff's prose is often less respectful than that on her poetry.

Annette von Droste-Hülshoff is acknowledged to be the most important German woman writer of the nineteenth century, and her novella “Die Judenbuche” (“The Jews' Beech Tree”) is recognized as a masterpiece. The novella has been translated into eight languages and is required reading in much of West Germany. Yet, though generally praised, it is frequently faulted for “errors” and “mistakes”; it is not accorded the autonomy of a work of art with its own artistic integrity or approached with the...