The Ambiguous Nature of Marriage in Elective Affinities


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		The Ambiguous Nature of Marriage in Elective Affinities

			31 March 1998

	The literary world has endeavored for quite some time to shed light on the motivations, workings, and outcomes of the rather commonplace activity of marriage. Goethe offers variations of this theme in his novel Elective Affinities. His portrayals of the sacred institution, however, deviate from the norm in respect to the reasons behind the action of marriage. In this paper, I will attempt to illuminate the nature of marriage as presented in Goethe's novel by examining the different relationships between characters and the motivations of these characters concerning marriage.

	�� Marriages in general have about them something - excuse the expression - doltish: they ruin the tenderest relationships and the only real reason they exist is so that at any rate one of the parties may pride himself on a crude sense of security. Everything is taken for granted and the people involved seem to have got married only so that they may thereafter go their own way (96).

	Comments and observations abound throughout the novel about the true motivations behind marriage, as shown in the above quotation from the Count found on page 96. From the passionate lovers to the apathetic meddlers, each character chose to define marriage in his or her own terms. These terms vary from the idyllic, romantic view of marriage based on a loving relationship to the cold-hearted, nearly malicious practice of marrying only for social gain. Familial responsibility also plays a major role, as parental arrangements or paternal influence also dictates the details of marriage. In essence, marriage can not be defined in only one term for the characters of the novel; rather, the term "marriage" encompasses many different ideas: a relationship based on love and respect, means to gain higher social standing and monetary rewards, and a response to tradition and family responsibility. Within the realm of these sometimes-defined, usually blurred lines of the meaning of marriage, each character tried to impose his idea to end both the internal struggles within himself and the external conflicts between all of the characters involved.


	Self-fulfillment recurs often as the primary reason for getting married. When based on personal gain, marriage almost always had the desired effect in the novel; Charlotte received masses of wealth from both her first husband and Eduard. Taken from the husbands' perspectives, a bleaker picture is drawn. The first husband died, leaving his money to a wife that did not love him, and Eduard could not wed his beloved because of his wedding vows that bound him to a wife he did not love. In the end, though, Charlotte had everything she wanted - her daughter was taken care of, she had plenty of personal wealth, and she was free to marry the Captain. While this idea of marriage does not support the romantic idea of mutual love, it does reinforce the basic idea of survival; Charlotte used her imagination, cunning, and influence to gain what she thought she needed to survive. However, she did this at the cost of her niece and husband. Her tactics are questionable, but the results are unmatched by nearly any other character in the book. In this section, I will discuss Charlotte's relationship with her first husband as well as her marriage to Eduard in order to explore marriage based on self-fulfillment as Goethe presents it in the novel.

	Charlotte's use of marriage as a way to amass personal wealth began before the book opened. Most of her history is taken from a story told by a visitor to the estate. The story, beginning on page 236 and recited to entertain Charlotte and Ottilie, succinctly recounts Charlotte's mysterious past. It includes the events surrounding Charlotte's first marriage to a man that she did not love. According to the facts presented in the novella and information pieced together throughout the novel, Charlotte had intended to marry her childhood friend Eduard, after her true love, the Captain, refused to marry her because of his military position. Eduard, however, married someone else instead because of Charlotte's poverty. Determined to increase her wealth, she married an old, rich man in order to raise her social standing both for the potential of future marriages for herself and for her daughter. Charlotte freely admits that she did not marry this man for love: "I had to give my hand to a well-to-do man I did not love, though he had my respect" (23).�

	Following this interpretation, Charlotte once again denounces romance in the name of social standing with her marriage to Eduard. As noted before, Charlotte did not marry Eduard when she was young because of the discrepancies in their financial standings. Once she had acquired the riches of her deceased husband, Eduard and his family obviously found the match to be pleasing. Charlotte, however, still presumably cared for the Captain. Although Charlotte fell in love with the Captain far before her first husband had died, she could not marry the Captain after her husband's death because of her overriding need for capital. Once again, the monetary rewards associated with marriage figure prominently in her decision. Charlotte's sister died poor, leaving her young daughter Ottilie in Charlotte's care. Charlotte was also responsible for her daughter, Luciane. I presume that the extra financial burden caused Charlotte to marry Eduard, although she still obviously felt very strongly for the Captain. Charlotte's feelings toward Eduard manifest themselves throughout the novel. The Baroness, a friend of Charlotte and Eduard, remembers that even when Charlotte was supposedly vying for Eduard's hand, she "sometimes tormented him, so that it was not hard to persuade him to his unhappy decision to travel and get away and get used to being without her" (95). Charlotte also offers little hints that all was not well in her relationship with Eduard. When the Count, another friend, remarks that Charlotte and Eduard "only had eyes for each other" (95) while they were courting, Charlotte coolly replies that "much is changed" (95), insinuating that she no longer feels that Eduard is supposed to be the man in her life. Based on her nearly lifelong longing for the Captain, I assume that Charlotte never really entertained the idea that anyone besides the Captain was supposed to be the man in her life.
	The pressures of familial relations also constitute a major force in the characters' decisions to wed. These types of marriages are found almost exclusively before the novel began.� One example of this marriage is Eduard's marriage to an older widow. He was strongly encouraged to marry a much older woman by his parents. This went against his wishes, since he wanted to marry Charlotte. While he was able to add the widow's wealth to his own after she died, he also wasted ten years of his life with a woman whom he did not love. Betrothal was still obviously in practice at the time the novel was written because there are several cases of betrothed marriage mentioned in the novel. One case of an arranged marriage never materialized at all. The families of Charlotte and the Captain planned for the two characters to be wedded to each other. Presumably, neither of these families lived to see the two marry. In fact, it was only after the deaths of Eduard and Ottilie that the two came together. In the end, their relationship was based on love and not familial pressure. While arranged marriages were used to wed individuals, Goethe does not portray this means as being either advantageous or successful. On the contrary, Goethe paints arranged marriage in a completely different light. This type of marriage is of limited importance in the novel as a whole, emphasizing its uselessness as a means of obtaining a strong marriage. The following paragraphs will attempt to explain the de-emphasizing of this type by examining the marriage of Eduard and his first wife and the youthful relationship between Charlotte and the Captain.��

	The first explicit case of someone marrying only because his family wanted him to is Eduard's marriage to his first wife, the widow. Based on the Count and the Baroness' account of Eduard and Charlotte's relationship before either of them married, Eduard had been deeply in love with Charlotte. However, Charlotte's destitution made the match unfavorable to Eduard?s family. Instead, Eduard married a rich widow, pleasing his parents while adding to his own wealth. Charlotte points out the circumstances of Eduard's first marriage early in the novel: "Your father, from an insatiable craving for possessions, married you to a somewhat older wealthy woman" (23). After this woman died, Eduard was left with her fortunes and an empty bed. He married his first love, Charlotte, and was content with the marriage until Ottilie stole his heart.

	His is not the only case of a marriage that was determined by family. The novella once again comes into importance as it traces Charlotte and Otto's relationship back to their births. Their families had fully intended that the two would marry, but Charlotte's fiery actions toward Otto made the two seem mismatched. Their families broke off the engagement, only to have fate intervene years later, when the Captain returned from his military excursions. Charlotte realized her love for him, but his responsibilities to the military kept them apart. By the end of the novel, and with the deaths of Ottilie and Eduard, there seemed to be nothing that kept Charlotte and Otto apart. Thus, a marriage that began as an arranged affair ended up being one presumably based on mutual love, showing the ambiguous nature within the novel of this most sacred of oaths.

	Finally, Goethe's novel includes the idea that marriage can be, and sometimes is, based on love and respect, rather than personal gain or outside forces. The end result of these unions as Goethe portrays them, however, is far from desirable. Of the two relationships that were based on love, one was a complete disaster, and the other had to surmount numerous obstacles to succeed. Eduard and Ottilie died having never fulfilled their dreams of wedding; the calamities that struck the estate in the time preceding their deaths lessened the possibility that Charlotte and the Captain would marry. It seems as though a marriage based on love can never manifest itself without endless troubles and infinite tears. Happiness was never found in a marriage based on love. This can be shown by studying Eduard's motivations behind wanting Ottilie and Ottilie's feelings for the luckless Eduard.

	Eduard was one of the biggest proponents of this form of marriage. He did not begin clinging to this idea until he fell in love with Ottilie. After this, his view toward marriage was forever changed. Although a marriage to Ottilie would have been his third marriage, Eduard readily acknowledged that his first two marriages had done little to sate his longing for love: "I have never loved before, it is only now I know what love is. Everything in my life was until now merely prologue, merely delay, merely pastime, merely waste of time, until I came to know her, until I came to love her, until I wholly and truly loved her" (146). To this end, Eduard completely renounced his responsibilities to Charlotte as husband and best friend. On the one occasion that he and Charlotte did engage in intimate activities with each other after Ottilie moved in, Eduard awoke the next morning feeling as though he had betrayed Ottilie. For Ottilie's sake, Eduard left his estate to live by himself on a farm and to work out the arrangements for an eventual divorce from Charlotte. He professed his motivations to be his love for Ottilie and his overwhelming sense that fate had declared that they should be together. Their unselfish love for each other was symbolized by the chalice with the initials "O" and "E" engraved on it. The chalice was supposed to have broken when Eduard threw it into the air at the dedication of the pavilion, but, by chance, someone had caught the chalice, forever opening the prospect for Eduard that the bonds between himself and Ottilie were also unbreakable. Eduard demonstrated his devotion to Ottilie throughout the novel, paying homage to her birthday with a display of fireworks and buying her the wooden casket filled with little treasures. At the end of the novel, he eventually gave her his life, wasting away as he grieved for her death, until he finally died himself.

	Ottilie also expressed seemingly pure love for Eduard. From the beginning of their intimate relationship, Ottilie and Eduard were nearly inseparable. They did their work together, they took walks together, they even played their musical instruments together. Ottilie showed her devotion to Eduard by copying a legal document for him, transforming her handwriting so that it mirrored Eduard's. When forced to be away from Eduard, Ottilie spent her time looking to the future when they would be united: "We have waited so long, we have been patient so long" (260). She quietly devoted herself to Eduard and his happiness throughout the remaining days of his stay at the estate. Although she did renounce her right to Eduard, she never renounced her love for him. Even as she lay dying on the sofa after her period of silence, the last words that she ever uttered were directed to Eduard: "Promise me you will live!" (293). Although Ottilie was not the first casualty of their love, nor would she be the last, her memory lived long enough to be the death of Eduard.

	In an examination of marriage in this novel, the relationship between the Count and the Baroness can not be overlooked. Theirs was a relationship that had endured unpopularity, scandal, and, finally, contentment through secrecy. Both of them had taken the vows of marriage, though not to each other, and each had decided to maintain these vows though it did not bring them together. In this case, marriage as an institution was treated almost apathetically; it did them no good, so they did not respect it so far as their personal lives went. Marriage was only an issue in legal matters. Even in this situation, the Count offered many solutions to refine marriage, including five-year contracts and indissoluble marriages after three tries. Such an off-handed way of speaking seemed to capture the spirit of marriage as portrayed in this novel; marriage was a conventional method to gain what one wanted under one's own conditions. The Count and Baroness epitomized the disillusioned husband and wife; they had tasted marriage, and had not liked what it had to offer.

	Goethe's novel Elective Affinities defines marriage in several different terms. Marriages based on personal gain, familial pressure, and actual love are all represented by the various relationships among the characters. The varying success of each type of marriage is also diverse; although Goethe did not go so far as to advocate marriage for personal gain, it is the only genre that generated consistent prosperity for its practitioners. The different treatments of marriage by each character prove to be as disparate as the characters themselves. By the end of the novel, the idea of marriage as an institution has been abolished; marriage was only as strong a bond as a character wanted it to be.

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