''Judith'' is a play written in 1840 by the German poet and dramatist

Friedrich Hebbel Christian Friedrich Hebbel (18 March 1813 – 13 December 1863) was a German poet and dramatist. Biography Hebbel was born at Wesselburen in Dithmarschen, Holstein, the son of a bricklayer. He was educated at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneum ...

. The play, composed at

Hamburg Hamburg (, ; ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg,. is the List of cities in Germany by population, second-largest city in Germany after Berlin and List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, 7th-lar ...

, was Hebbel's first tragedy. The following year it was performed in Hamburg and Berlin, making Hebbel known throughout Germany. The opera ''Holofernes'' of

Emil von Reznicek Emil Nikolaus Joseph, Freiherr von Reznicek (4 May 1860, in Vienna – 2 August 1945, in Berlin) was an Austrian composer of Romanian-Czech ancestry. Life Reznicek's grandfather, Josef Resnitschek (1787–1848), was a trumpet virtuoso and ...

was composed on the motifs of the play. Based on the

deuterocanonical The deuterocanonical books, meaning 'of, pertaining to, or constituting a second Biblical canon, canon', collectively known as the Deuterocanon (DC), are certain books and passages considered to be Biblical canon, canonical books of the Old ...

Book of Judith The Book of Judith is a deuterocanonical book included in the Septuagint and the Catholic Church, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Christian Old Testament of the Bible but Development of the Hebrew Bible canon, excluded from the ...

, Hebbel's adaptation presents a heroine who oversteps the boundaries of proper womanhood as defined by his 19th-century upbringing. Changing the political plot of the biblical story into a psychological investigation, he invests Judith with a sexuality and beauty that prove fatal to the men around her: she is left a virgin on her wedding night because her beauty (or so she believes) renders her husband Manasses impotent, and in Holofernes's tent, she subconsciously exercises her repressed sexual desire, leading Holofernes to rape her so that she can subsequently behead him. "Holofernes prefigures the misogynist ideology of the ''fin-de-siecle''", and while Judith resists the traditional female role she is given, she cannot transcend its restrictions.

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Further reading