Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Whilst Lolita certainly gets four stars for its writing style, it’s hard to give it five due to the subject matter, which is probably unfair on Nabokov. It’s an uncomfortable book to read but one that definitely merits a re-read. 

The reason that it works well is the use of the first person narration. The reader should be able to see through Humbert’s self-deception. Whilst he is obviously erudite he continually flaunts his cleverness and depicts himself as being handsome and heroic (albeit with a kind of ironic archness), frequently addressing the reader as if pleading for mercy and anticipating the reader’s reaction. It is only towards the end of the novel that he admits to himself that he has destroyed Delores’s life and his own, yet there he still seems to feel that to an extent he is in the right.

 He is certain that he is in the right at the beginning of the novel; the reader sees this in the way that he describes his ‘nymphets’  as pretty much asking for it and although Dolores tells him he raped her, he believes that she seduced him. By calling her 'Lolita', 'Dolly', 'Lolly' and other diminutive names he infantilises her, refusing to accept it when she matures and tries to leave him aged fourteen. It is ironic that he enjoys contemplating the prospect of corrupting her innocence when she has already had sex with someone at camp.

Part of Humbert’s self-deception is a belief in what he calls ‘McFate’. Through a series of coincidences such as the death of Charlotte Haze he is able to fulfil his fantasy of entering into a relationship with her daughter, yet by the end he discovers that fate hasn’t been as kind as he thought – Dolores was in love with Quilty all along and he has acted as a kind of mirror of Humbert throughout her life – he is at the hotel where she is seduced and subsequently written a play which she is supposed to star in, then he follows them around America leaving clues about her identity for him to find, eventually assisting her to leave Humbert.  

The prologue reveals Humbert’s fate but it is only once the reader has finished the book that they are able to discern that it reveals the fate of Dolores as well (she is called by her married name). We know right from the start that Humbert died in prison for murder before he could be punished for his crime, but have no knowledge of whether he killed her or someone else. In a sense, he is never really punished for his crimes, although he admits that he should be sentenced to thirty five years in prison for his offenses against Delores (he seems to believe that Quilty’s murder is just, he is depicted as being far worse than Humbert in the way he treats her). 

Lolita is not an erotic novel and Nabokov does not set out to make it erotic, lewd or pornographic. However, it does have a certain element of sensuality in the way that Humbert describes her body. He is possessive but she is not the type of girl that can be possessed in the way that he wants. He has to continually threaten, bribe and cajole her into accepting his embraces, staying with him and not alerting other people to their relationship. He is particularly suspicious of other men desiring her and taking her away from him. 

Somehow, what makes her a ‘nymphet’ both attracts and repels him. He is drawn to her but at the same time despises her vulgarity and conventionality. Yet her being a ‘nymphet’ is his way of excusing his passion and his acting on it (along with citing books that describe archaic or foreign practices such as reading to her about Sicilian fathers who have sex with their daughters. He is even more thrilled with the incestuous undertone of sleeping with his step-daughter and imagines producing a daughter and a grand-daughter who will be available to him in the future. 

Although Nabokov denies that the book is a cultural commentary, it can be read as satire, for example, the way that Delores reacts to advertisements, the references to movies, magazines and the way that she attempts to integrate with other teenagers. Humbert sees this as being somehow beneath them, so he only refers in name to books, authors and plays and he attempts to get her to read books that he approves of. 

The narrative style uses word-play, puns and other linguistic devices to great effect. Although the story itself is tragic, there are comic moments as well, for example, the farcical murder of Quilty who refuses to believe that he is about to get shot. The two characters snipe at each other in a mixture of English and French, Humbert forces him to read his really awful poem about why he is going to kill him and Quilty tries to stop him by offering him his house which has its own ‘pet’; a woman with three breasts. 

Lolita herself is a well-written character; a mixture of innocence and experience, powerless and powerful at the same time. There is continually a sense that as Humbert does not know her and refuses to see her as anything other than his own construct of his idealised girl, that the reader cannot see past this construction, she eludes us and she is not a predictable character just as this is not a predictable story.  As the idea of ‘Lolita‘has become a part of culture the reader comes to the book with certain expectation which are probably not met by the book. As Nabokov said ‘I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction...Lolita has no moral in tow.’ (p358).