Observing the Sexual Context of Lolita

Lolita is a narrative of Humbert Humbert, an European man who has an obsession for prepubescent girls (dubbed "nymphets"). As a boy, Humbert has a sexual and romantic relationship with a girl named Annabel. Annabel dies from typhus and her death results a blight on Humbert's psychosexual development. He deliriously lusts after the young girls who bear a resemblance to Annabel, thereby preventing him from forming a healthy relationship with women. Though Humbert half-heartedly agrees to marry a woman named Valeria, their marriage briefly ends in a divorce. After this, he moves to America, and by chance, becomes a lodger in the house of a widow named Charlotte Haze. Charlotte has a daughter named Dolores Haze-the "second Annabel"-who immediately becomes Humbert's utmost object of desire, his "Lolita". An egotistic mother, Charlotte dislikes her daughter and is jealous when Dolores behaves too friendly toward Humbert. Charlotte decides to send Dolores to a summer camp, much to Humbert's distraught. While they are away, he finds Charlotte's letter in which she confesses her love to him. Seeing an opportunity to remain close to Lolita, Humbert readily agrees to a speedy marriage with Charlotte. Though he does not carry out his murderous intent, Humbert considers killing Charlotte so he could possess Lolita with perfect immunity.

In the novel Lolita, Nabokov's usage of ecstatic and disdainful tones enhances the complex character of Humbert by shedding light on Humbert's attitude toward his affair with Lolita. He claims that his affection for the little girl is nothing less than a laborious and glorified struggle in the "strange, awful, maddening world [of] nymphet love, in which the beastly and beautiful merged at one point." Through this beautiful and passionate plea, Humbert deviously strikes at the jury's pathos and presents himself before them as an innocent man whose only fault is failing to defend himself in an overwhelming battle of love, rather than a lurid monster as the evidence indicted him to be. After dissuading the audience from regarding him as a ruthless criminal, Humbert instantly derides the other pedophiles who indulge freely under legal statures, saying that "there is nothing wrong when a brute of forty... sheds his sweat drenched finery...thrusts himself up to the hilt into his youthful bride". The contemptuous and intellectual tone works in Humbert's favor by depicting other "brute" pedophiles as monsters while implying that Humbert, a scholarly, intelligent man, should not and could not be one of them. Overall, Nabokov renders tone in this polarizing style to bring out the dark nuances of Humbert's character: a passionate man with a knack for manipulation.

Work Cited:

Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. 1955