The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II | Page 2

defy
prudence, self-respect, duty, even religion,--going its way like a blind
and ruthless law of physics. But if this is to happen the recombining
elements must, of course, have each its specific character; else there is
no affinity and no tragedy.
It is no part of the analogy that the pressure of sex is always and by its
very nature like the attraction of atoms. Aside from the fact that
character consists largely in the steady inhibition of instinct and passion
by the will, there is this momentous difference between atoms or
molecules, on the one hand, and souls on the other: the character of the
atom or molecule is constant, that of the soul is highly variable. There
is no room here for remarks on free will and determinism; suffice it to
say that Goethe does not preach any doctrine of mechanical
determinism in human relations. The scientific analogy must not be
pressed too hard. It is really not important, since after all nothing turns
on it. Whatever interest the novel has it would have if all reference to
chemistry had been omitted. Goethe's thesis, if he can be said to have
one, is simply that character is fate.
He imagines a middle-aged man and woman, Edward and Charlotte,
who are, to all seeming, happily united in marriage. Each has been
married before to an unloved mate who has conveniently died, leaving

them both free to yield to the gentle pull of long-past youthful
attachment. Their feeling for each other is only a mild friendship, but
that does not appear to augur ill, since they are well-to-do, and their
fine estate offers them both a plenty of interesting work. Edward has a
highly esteemed friend called the Captain, who is for the moment
without suitable employment for his ability and energy. Edward can
give him just the needed work, with great advantage to the property,
and would like to do so. Charlotte fears that the presence of the Captain
may disturb their pleasant idyl, but finally yields. She herself has a
niece, Ottilie, a beautiful girl whom no one understands and who is not
doing well at her boarding-school. Charlotte would like to have the girl
under her own care. After much debate the pair take both the Captain
and Ottilie into their spacious castle.
And now the elective affinity begins to do its disastrous work. Edward,
who has always indulged himself in every whim and has no other
standard of conduct, falls madly in love with the charming Ottilie, who
has a passion for making herself useful and serving everybody. She
adapts herself to Edward, fails to see what a shabby specimen of a man
he really is, humors his whims, and worships him--at first in an
innocent girlish way. Charlotte is not long in discovering that the
Captain is a much better man than her husband; she loves him, but
within the limits of wifely duty. In the vulgar world of prose such a
tangle could be most easily straightened out by divorce and remarriage.
This is what Edward proposes and tries to bring about. The others are
almost won over to this solution when the event happens that
precipitates the tragedy: the child of Edward and Charlotte is
accidentally drowned by Ottilie's carelessness.
It is a very dubious link in Goethe's fiction that this child, while the
genuine offspring of Edward and Charlotte, has the features of Ottilie
and the Captain. From the moment of the drowning Ottilie is a changed
being. Her character quickly matures; like a wakened sleep-walker she
sees what a dangerous path she has been treading. She feels that
marriage with Edward would be a crime. She resists his passionate
appeals, and her remorse takes on a morbid tinge. It becomes a fixed
idea. Happiness is not for her. She must renounce it all. She must
atone--atone--for her awful sin. For a moment they plan to send her
back to school, but she cannot tear herself away from Edward's sinister

presence. At last she refuses food and gradually starves herself to death.
The wretched Edward does likewise.
Any just appreciation of Goethe's art in The Elective Affinities must
begin by recognizing that it is about Ottilie. For her sake the book was
written. It is a study of a delicately organized virgin soul caught in the
meshes of an ignoble fate and beating its wings in hopeless misery until
death ends the struggle. The other characters are ordinary people:
Charlotte and the Captain ordinary in their good sense and self-control,
Edward ordinary in his moral flabbiness and his foolish infatuation. His
death, to be sure, is unthinkable for such a man and does but testify to
the unearthly attraction with which the girl is invested by Goethe's art.
The figure of Ottilie, like that