The Battering and Meta-Battering of Droste's Margreth: Covert Misogyny in Die Judenbuche's Critical Reception

Examination of Margreth Mergel's life as presented in Die Judenbuche not only clarifies the image of her as a victim of family and society, but by extension also raises questions about the negative treatment accorded her in secondary literature. Critics have tended to ignore the evidence presented within the text, accepting instead the societally generated stance of the work's fictive narrator at face value. They have consequently infused interpretations of Die Judenbuche with an insidious misogyny that maligns and marginalizes the figure of Margreth and also suggests the presence of a persistent bias in critical Germanistic scholarship. (GBP)