Sexuality and American Culture

 When reading the foreword of Lolita, I was anticipating that Humbert would be this strong and defiant character, unafraid to break the norms of the society to follow his own selfish desires. Yet, when I started reading the first few chapters, I found myself reconsidering my opinion of Humbert’s personality. Instead of this strong character I thought he would be, I found him to be a pedophile like all others, trying to run away from his abnormality as if it were a contagious disease. First he attempts to “normalize” himself by getting married to Valeria. However, he is only attracted to her because of her childish airs although she is not a nymphet. Poor Humbert! He is trying to escape his own nature to only imprison himself in it.

    Interestingly, when Humbert thinks about killing Valeria, he confesses it without the slightest shame. We almost don’t detect any regret or shame in his confession of having murderous thoughts and even premeditating murder. However, further in the book, when Humber enters a sexual relation with Lolita, even before he actually describes the sexual scene, he is already defending himself of not being guilty. He gives several reasons as to why he isn’t: Lolita starting it all, her being not virgin. He even assures himself that the readers are persuaded that Lolita wasn’t under the effects of the drug by setting the scene in the morning and by proving that she was entirely conscious of what she was doing.  So, we’re asking ourselves: why is there this constant need for Humbert to defend himself and to confess his innocence? By doing so, isn’t he admitting that he is in fact guilty? If we briefly go back to the scarlet letter to compare Humbert’s character to Hester’s, we can clearly see that these two characters are essentially different. Humbert is greatly influenced by the norms of the society. His actions are shaped accordingly. He is almost afraid of the person he is. He acknowledges that he is not a gentleman and that he is corrupted. In chapter 13, while Lolita is singing, Humberts happens to rub against her until he climaxes. He explains afterwards how proud he feels for having satisfied himself without corrupting Lolita since the latter didn’t notice it. Again, there is this constant guilt that is present in Humbert’s character which we didn’t find in Hester when we we’re reading the first chapters of the Scarlet letter.

       The author of “Lolita” makes a clear distinction between normal and abnormal, moral and immoral. He admits that being a pedophile is abnormal and immoral. He attempts to reach the normal state by getting married to a woman. But why did he have to actually marry a woman to feel normal? After reading Katz’s essay, we clearly understand why Humbert didn’t just enter a heterosexual relationship to be normal. In Katz’s essay, we get to understand how even heterosexuality was “still fighting an uphill battle” in the early 20^th century. Women and men were still living according to the Victorian ideology of what love should be between men and women and for what purpose it should be used for. Being heterosexual and entering sexual relations for pleasure and not for procreation was as abnormal as being a homosexual until after 1930. If Humbert were living in today’s society, perhaps he wouldn’t go as far as getting married but would have just entered a “heterosexual” relationship to try to suppress his pedophilic desires since being “heterosexual” without getting married is more or less accepted in today’s society.