Part 2 of Lolita and Peiss 11
To be honest, it was a lot harder for me to re-read Lolita this time around. The reason I bring this up is that I don’t feel I can properly analyze it without first examining the lens that I am reading through. The emotional connection to book was lessened, and instead I kind of gave it a colder reading. Certainly the elements of Foucault are prominent throughout the book, as well as Nabakov’s game-play with the reader, and his undermining humor about Scientia Sexualis.
A few things I would like to mention in particular about the second half; first, the rehashing of HH’s memories of Lolita’s obvious depression and helplessness. From pages 283-287 he recounts very heart-breaking snippets of time, glimpses of the reality of their incestuous relationship. His projections onto Lolita throughout that time had been able to hold, but after her abandonment of him, the cracks in his fantasy shine through. What I find interesting is something Richard was discussing last class- talking about HH’s love transcending that of human love but the love of a concept, likened to Plato’s enlightened kings. However the flaw in the relation to Lolita is that HH loses that concept and finds during his visit that he is still madly in love with Lolita, regardless of her increase in age and size, and highly unappealing circumstances to the his tastes. Granted, HH is a pedophile, but his lack of fixation on other children, and his lack of revisiting the fantasy of copulation by the shore (which he touches upon) in a determined manner speaks to the desire for this one particular person which is certainly not transcendent, and simply a mutilated and pathetic love. His recalling these moments in time in which he saw the damage he was doing to Lolita informs his shame. It does not stop him though from inviting her once again to live with him, and exacting his revenge on Quilty. I find interesting the sense of self-righteousness he holds against Quilty, regardless of the fact that he gleans no satisfaction from the murder, because of his shame. It seems to me that HH cannot align the two parts of his feelings into one. This is also reflected in the entire construction of his character; HH is able to carry out relationships, bungled as they may be (Rita, for example) with adult women, regardless of his preferences. It brings to mind some of the readings in Peiss’ book, which at first I had some trouble making connections to.
The readings, the ones by Kinsey and also the one on government employees, were what struck me in relation to the earlier point. In the first, Kinsey discusses the inadequacy of characterization of identity based on sexual partners, and that anyone who had a homosexual experience could fall under that category, but if they had also had a hetersexual experience they could be classified as such also. This speaks to the innate complexity of people and the lack of nuance in sexual identity. In the same vein, the piece on government employees discusses the undesirable nature of “homosexuals and other sexual perverts” because of a plethora of nonsense. The important part in my mind of that writing, aside from the meaning of it for people’s lives at the time, is that part of the justification for not wanting homosexual people in the government was their potential fear of being outed, and thus creating a weakness. People who could be identified or classified as homosexual were required to hide their “identity,” while at the same time had a propensity to lure and draw in other members of “normal” society. While this is contradictory, it also speaks to the nature of inadequate classification and ideas on identity. To reduce someone in their entirety to their sexual preferences allows no other values, morals, let alone weaknesses, into the picture. Placing the heterosexual above the idea of even having weaknesses also speaks to a lack of comprehensive thought. All and all I was taken by the concept of complexity. Kinsey began to deal with it, which was extremely radical at the time (evidenced by the reactions in the second reading), HH is an example of it, and the governmental writing is really also an example of the poor self-reflection and ability to speak to the complexity of people. There must have been tons of people leading double lives, or simply married into the system in which they were supposed to that did not identify with that institution. Sure, they were heterosexuals in a sense, but they also were homosexuals, or bisexual… However, they were people, and people cannot be reduced to a classification system of identity based on one variable.
I realize that there’s a lot of opinion in this writing, it was difficult this week for me to curb it’s involvement in my analysis of the text. The other thing I wanted to note is that Kinsey and the piece on employment, as well as Lolita, but more clearly reflected in the primary sources, those pieces came during the Mccarthy era, who has in office starting in 1947, but was extremely prominent nationwide in 1950, and that entire era is flush with his style of accusation and demagogy.
Tags: Lolita
