ABSTRACT
In his 1809 novel Elective Affinities, Goethe draws attention to human and social relations in an age on the cusp of modernity through an exploration of tragic love. Imagining the intersection of the romantic and the modern alongside the themes of stasis and progress, Elective Affinities pivots on the entry of the Captain and Ottile into the inert and materialistic marriage of Edward and Charlotte. As Edward first discovers an attraction to Ottile, followed by a similar development between Charlotte and the Captain, the love that cannot be declared between either couple is revealed in a series of sublimations. The tragedy of Edward and Ottile’s love lies in the fact that she is his wife’s niece, and the situation is rendered insoluble by his compulsion to consider his “various relationships: with his wife, their families, society, his property.”1
