Conclusion: Novel Instability

Summary

THE PARADIGM SHIFTS IN FAMILY LIFE, inheritance law, pedagogical theory, and biological understanding, together with the exploration in the novel of associated values and concepts that took place at the turn of the nineteenth century, were neither immediate nor inevitable. I have drawn attention to the instability and need for exploration of these concepts throughout this book, pointing out that the novel—both its canonical and lesser-known exemplars—reworks what a family is, does, and means in varied and complex ways. Goethe's Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities, 1809) is an especially thorough, even relentless, testament to this instability. In the novel Goethe subverts the thematic and generic conventions that have established themselves in ways that illustrate painfully how tenuous and double-edged notions of family and affective bonds can be. Reading Goethe's novel at the end of this project reminds us of the ways in which the families explored by the genre around 1800 are not static, smug exemplars of traditional and conservative values but, rather, depend crucially on emotional engagement and critical reflection—and, further, on the recognition and acknowledgement rather than suppression or dismissal of conflict and suffering. The publication of Die Wahlverwandtschaften between the two Wilhelm Meister novels suggests that we should not see this subversion of conventions as a sign that Goethe is finished with the genre or that its creative possibilities have been exhausted after the turn of the nineteenth century; rather, Die Wahlverwandtschaften draws attention to the ways in which the family and the individual, generation and testation, and even narration itself cannot be taken for granted. The novel around 1800 is not a single, monolithic entity—its many exemplars, both canonical and supposedly trivial, advance and explore a wide variety of ideas about subjecthood, development, affection, education, and witnessing; further, these texts cannot be reduced to straightforward normative claims but must rather be approached with sensitivity and receptiveness to the imaginative engagement that they themselves solicit from readers through both thematic and formal devices.

On first inspection, Die Wahlverwandtschaften appears to be a deliberate undoing of the ideas and projects depicted in the novels I have treated so far: the histories of the four protagonists do not extend back to their childhood and education (with the partial exception of Ottilie's), but rather focus on events within their adulthood, particularly Eduard's and Charlotte's first marriages.