Elective Affinities: Analysis of Setting
"Elective Affinities" is a novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that explores complex interpersonal relationships set against the backdrop of an extensive country estate in Germany. The main characters, Edward and Charlotte, lead a cultivated life away from aristocratic court society, residing in a manor house surrounded by idyllic gardens and a picturesque landscape. Goethe carefully constructs a setting that, while generically European, emphasizes psychological depth over geographical specificity, hinting at broader social and philosophical themes relevant to the time.
Key locations within the estate, such as the rustic moss hut that Charlotte is building, symbolize the initial harmony in Edward and Charlotte’s marriage, which is soon disrupted by the arrival of external characters—the Captain and Ottilie. The lake and nearby village serve as additional settings where plans for improvement distract the characters from personal tragedies, including the accidental drowning of Charlotte's infant. Additionally, the village church project sponsored by Charlotte reflects Goethe's engagement with contemporary art and culture, highlighting the tension between Enlightenment rationality and the emerging Romantic sensibility. Overall, the settings in "Elective Affinities" are integral to understanding the characters' emotional landscapes and the novel's thematic explorations.
Elective Affinities: Analysis of Setting
First published:Die Wahlverwandtschaften, 1809 (English translation, 1872)
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Love
Time of work: Eighteenth century
Places Discussed
Edward and Charlotte’s home
Edward and Charlotte’s home. Extensive country estate in Germany—a home worthy of an aristocratic couple who have withdrawn from fashionable court life to share a cultivated though not reclusive retirement. Their large manor house with two wings is surrounded by domestic gardens and a nearby landscape of villages, fields, lakes, and hills. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe almost seems inclined to conceal the fact that the locale of his story is German, choosing instead to evoke a generic European landscape comparable to a landscape portrayed by noted seventeenth and eighteenth century painters.
By avoiding details of a specific locale, Goethe focuses attention on the psychological content of his narrative that permits him to suggest that his story’s tragic events are underlain by social and philosophical issues that are continental in scope. His story’s narrow topographical range also gives its setting—and the novel itself—a sense of being a laboratory of social relationships, a circumstance that agrees with the novel’s title, which is borrowed from contemporary scientific speculation about the physical interaction of chemical substances.
Gardening and the alteration and management of the estate are essential themes in the novel from its opening; the fateful events that are to overwhelm Edward and Charlotte, along with their companions Ottilie and the unnamed “Captain,” are set in motion in the first chapter by Edward’s insistent question of Charlotte, “Are my gardening and your landscaping to be for hermits only?”
Moss hut
Moss hut. Small, rustic outbuilding that Charlotte is building at the beginning of the novel. A picturesque place overlooking part of the estate, the hut is an organic structure that Charlotte intends to visit with Edward. When Edward first sees it he pointedly observes that although the hut has a fine view, it seems a little small. However, he quickly adds that it has room for a third person because he hopes to secure Charlotte’s consent to invite the Captain, his lifelong friend, to live with them for a time. Charlotte herself is soon to ask that her niece, Ottilie, also join their family circle, and she in turn concedes that the hut will even accommodate a fourth person. This brief, early, scene in the hut is the inception of the disturbance of Edward and Charlotte’s marriage that is to be caused by the introduction of two elements from the outside.
The rustic hut decorated with evergreen boughs expresses the affection that Charlotte has for her marriage and her country estate, but the arrival of the Captain heralds the ends of both her tranquil relationship with Edward and her landscaping project. Charlotte’s hut is soon overshadowed by an ambitious plan promoted by the Captain to build a summerhouse on a higher, more commanding location beyond the hut. Soon, both domestic harmony and a refined, intimate relation to nature are sacrificed to unpredictable currents of passion between Edward and Ottilie and between Charlotte and the Captain.
Lake and village
Lake and village. Edward and the Captain formulate plans to improve both the lake and the village that adjoin the estate, thus indulging in another round of technical and engineering activity which, in the context of the emotional turmoil brewing in their midst, is somewhat irrational and self-indulgent. Their penchant for improvements alarms Charlotte, who is sensibly concerned with the financial stability of the estate.
The lake is also the scene of the novel’s most unsettling passage, in which Charlotte’s infant child accidentally drowns while in Ottilie’s care. The contrast of this tragedy with the men’s preoccupation with civil and social engineering is a striking instance of the author’s eighteenth century Enlightenment sensibility confronting newer currents of Romanticism.
Village church
Village church. In a subsequent passage of the novel concerning a talented young architect, Charlotte herself is the sponsor of a project to restore the village church and decorate its chapel. Here Goethe reveals the depth of his knowledge of contemporary and historical art by describing an interior space that recalls the work of the German painter Philip Otto Runge, a younger contemporary of Goethe’s and a representative of the transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism within their cultural milieu.
Bibliography
Dieckmann, Liselotte. “Novels: The Elective Affinities.” In Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Boston: Twayne, 1974. Discusses the way irony, symbolism, and other narrative elements shape the novel. Contains an annotated list of Goethe criticism.
Lange, Victor. Introduction to Elective Affinities, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Translated by Elizabeth Mayer and Louise Bogan. Chicago: Regnery, 1963. Written by a well-known Goethe scholar, this is an excellent introduction to the philosophical and moral issues raised in the novel. Emphasizes the ambivalence of love and marriage in the story.
Peacock, Ronald. “The Ethics of Goethe’s Die Wahlverwandtschaften.” Modern Language Review 71, no. 2 (April, 1976): 330-343. Examines the novel’s ethical sensibility regarding marriage as an institution. Places Ottilie at the center of the story as an affirmative ethical statement, despite her tragic life.
Tanner, Tony. “Goethe’s Die Wahlverwandtschaften.” In Adultery in the Novel: Contract and Transgression. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979. A study of the four main characters. Highly critical of Ottilie, who is usually idolized. Analyzes the symbolic value of particular objects, activities, and landscape descriptions so prominent in the novel.
Vietor, Karl. “Elective Affinites.” In Goethe the Poet, translated by Moses Hadas. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1949. Represents the classical view of the novel in German scholarship, which points to the inevitable conflict between nature and civilization. Argues that the solution lies in restraint, balance, and resignation. Emphasizes the tragic necessity of the plot.