Category: Nabokov: Lolita

“I think love breaks all taboos. Don’t you?” (67)

More Than Something Gone Wrong: A Life Born of Fate Calliope Stephanides (of Middlesex) is much like Humbert (of Lolita) in his belief in fate. In both cases the narrators outline  a series of events, down to small details, and highlight the fact that if any one of these things had happened differently their stories […]

Or You Can Just Blame Your Mother… The Alfred Kinsey and US Senate reading this week seem the paramount example of scientia sexualis; numbers, facts, and (false) theories predominate in both pieces. But what interested me the most was the “blame game.” According to Kinsey, “disapproval of heterosexual coitus…before marriage is often an important factor […]

The adventures of Humbert the pedophile and Lolita the hobbledehoy continue on the road with souvenirs, countless inns, a brief intermission at Beardsley, and a doppelganger identified as Trapp. And how appropriate is it that an Aztec red convertible haunts H.H.? It parallels his incandescent lust; moreover, it seems that red—commonly used to represent anything […]

Dolly’s Return In my reading of Lolita thus far (I’m not quite done with the second part yet) two scenes seem to present themselves as extremely important and interesting, and both involve Lolita reverting to Dolly in resistance.  As we have discussed, it seems HH needs to invent a totally new person, fully separate from […]

Nabokov and Kinsey present work that is provocative in the same way, though the former crafted an intricate work of fiction while the latter published research: Both writers  confront the reader with a sexual matter the reader would like to deny by forcing him to recognize its presence in American life and society.  This is […]

The range of psychoses related in Lolita is relentless.  The entire text could be a document in Peiss’s textbook, and wading through these murky waters becomes an exercise in suspicion.  Humbert’s mixture of paranoia and recklessness makes me root for his success in keeping his and Lo’s anonymiy despite my increasing disgust and fury with […]

Dr. Humbert and Destitute Dolly Kaitlyn mentioned how Part 2 attacks psychology, and I completely agree.  I felt this most strongly in chapter 1, when H.H. uses Dolores’ natural resistance to being kidnapped and raped against her: “I am not a criminal sexual psychopath taking indecent liberties with a child. The rapist was Charlie Holmes; […]

Power and Coercion in Lolita Part 2 of Lolita was heavy on the power relations, particularly between HH and Lo.  Throughout their cross-country travels and stay at Beardsley, HH is impossibly controlling.  To keep her as subdued as he can, Humbert uses the adult-child power dynamic to threaten Lo and holds money and other material […]

Unreliability, Psychology, Liberty Well we certainly get our fill of the unreliable narrator in Part 2 of Lolita. First, H.H. can’t remember his and Lolita’s travel itinerary (which contrast suspiciously with his seemingly photographic memory earlier). On their second cross-country trip there is the question of weather or not someone is following H.H. and Lolita, […]