Reading Order
Elective Affinities Reading Order
Elective Affinities (1809) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is the strangest and most philosophical of his novels — organized around a chemical metaphor: just as chemical elements form compounds with each other according to affinities that determine which combinations are more stable, so human beings form attachments according to affinities that may override the attachments they have already made. Eduard and Charlotte are a middle-aged married couple living happily on their estate; they invite Eduard's friend the Captain and Charlotte's ward Ottilie to stay; and the four find themselves reorganized by their affinities into a more powerful combination that destroys the existing compounds. The novel is a meditation on free will and necessity, on whether human beings can resist the chemical logic of their affinities, and on the nature of marriage as a social institution. Goethe called it his best and most deeply felt novel. It was the first novel to use the word 'elective affinity' in its modern sense, and it remains one of the strangest and most formally perfect works in the German tradition.
Where to start
Elective Affinities (1809) — the complete novel in the David Constantine translation (Oxford World's Classics), which is the standard English version.
Complete Elective Affinities Book List
- 1Buy
Elective Affinities
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe·1809·The complete novel — Eduard, Charlotte, the Captain, and Ottilie. Goethe called it his best and most deeply felt novel; the David Constantine translation (Oxford World's Classics) is the standard English version - 2Buy
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe·1774·The companion — Werther's fatal passion for Lotte. The companion investigation of the same Goethean theme: the encounter between a powerful passion and the social institutions (marriage, convention) that prevent its fulfillment, with fatal consequences - 3Buy
Faust
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe·1808·The companion masterwork. The companion investigation of the Goethean theme of striving and the human relationship to the forces (chemical, demonic) that govern it - 4Buy
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy·1878·Tolstoy's companion investigation of the same subject — the married woman who falls in love with someone else and the consequences. The companion investigation of the same social and moral terrain: both novels are organized around the encounter between a marriage and a passion that the marriage cannot contain, and both are organized around the question of whether the social institution is adequate to the human need - 5Buy
Middlemarch
George Eliot·1872·Eliot's companion investigation of marriage as a social institution and the possibilities and limits of human connection. The companion investigation of the same subject from a different cultural tradition: both are organized around the question of what marriage is for and what happens when it fails to be what the parties hoped it would be - 6Buy
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald·1925·Fitzgerald's companion investigation of the chemistry of desire and the impossibility of repeating the past. The companion investigation of the same Elective Affinities theme: like Ottilie for Eduard, Daisy for Gatsby is an object of desire that is also a symbol of a lost world that cannot be recovered - 7Buy
Effi Briest
Theodor Fontane·1895·Fontane's companion German novel about the young Effi married to an older man and her affair. The companion in the German tradition: the companion investigation of the same social terrain as Elective Affinities — the consequences of the passion that violates the marriage contract in a society that punishes it - 8Buy
The House in Paris
Elizabeth Bowen·1935·Bowen's companion investigation of the same chemical metaphor — the encounters that organize the people who pass through the house into different configurations. The companion twentieth-century investigation of the Elective Affinities theme: Bowen is one of the few novelists who has thought as deeply as Goethe about the way that human relationships are determined by forces that are not entirely under rational control
Elective Affinities — Frequently Asked Questions
What is the meaning of the title Elective Affinities?
The title refers to a concept from eighteenth-century chemistry (Wahlverwandtschaften in German): the tendency of certain chemical elements to abandon their existing compounds in order to form new, more stable ones when they encounter elements with stronger affinities. In the novel, Eduard explains the concept with the analogy of A and B (Eduard and Charlotte) in a compound that is disrupted by the introduction of C (the Captain) and D (Ottilie): the stronger affinities between A and D, and between B and C, mean that the existing compounds dissolve and new ones form. Goethe uses the chemical metaphor to investigate the philosophical question of whether human beings can be said to exercise free will when they form or abandon attachments, or whether their affinities are as determined as chemical ones.
Why is Ottilie such an important character?
Ottilie is the most important character in Elective Affinities because she is the purest embodiment of the novel's philosophical problem: she seems to exercise less choice than any of the other characters (she is young, passive, barely speaks), and yet she is the figure whose presence is most disruptive of the existing order. Her affinity for Eduard is immediately perceived by everyone and is irresistible; and her response to this affinity — to remove herself from the situation rather than allow it to destroy the marriage — is the only attempt in the novel at a principled resistance to the chemical logic. Goethe's treatment of Ottilie is deeply ambivalent: she is both the victim of the affinity and its agent, and her death at the end of the novel is simultaneously her self-sacrifice and her vindication.
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