with great advantage to the property, and would like to do so. Charlotte
fears that the presence of the Captain may disturb their pleasant idyl,
but finally yields. She herself has a niece, Ottilie, a beautiful girl
whom no one understands and who is not doing well at her
boarding-school. Charlotte would like to have the girl under her own
care. After much debate the pair take both the Captain and Ottilie into
their spacious castle.

And now the elective affinity begins to do its disastrous work. Edward,
who has always indulged himself in every whim and has no other standard
of conduct, falls madly in love with the charming Ottilie, who has a
passion for making herself useful and serving everybody. She adapts
herself to Edward, fails to see what a shabby specimen of a man he
really is, humors his whims, and worships him--at first in an innocent
girlish way. Charlotte is not long in discovering that the Captain is a
much better man than her husband; she loves him, but within the limits
of wifely duty. In the vulgar world of prose such a tangle could be most
easily straightened out by divorce and remarriage. This is what Edward
proposes and tries to bring about. The others are almost won over to
this solution when the event happens that precipitates the tragedy: the
child of Edward and Charlotte is accidentally drowned by Ottilie's
carelessness.

It is a very dubious link in Goethe's fiction that this child, while the
genuine offspring of Edward and Charlotte, has the features of Ottilie
and the Captain. From the moment of the drowning Ottilie is a changed
being. Her character quickly matures; like a wakened sleep-walker she
sees what a dangerous path she has been treading. She feels that
marriage with Edward would be a crime. She resists his passionate
appeals, and her remorse takes on a morbid tinge. It becomes a fixed