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Lolita is the story of Humbert Humbert - literary scholar, European
immigrant to America with an ever derisive view of his new country, and most
famously, paedophile. He has an insatiable lust for “nymphets”, girls on the
cusp of puberty, girls just like Dolores Haze (Lolita, as she will always be
when under his caresses).
The lush writing of Humbert is a stark contrast to the caricatured
academic writer of the prologue. “You can always count on a murderer for a
fancy prose style” our narrator and protagonist tells us, leaving us to wonder
who his victim was. He contemplates murder and violence several times throughout
the novel, and knowing that he does carry out the act from the very beginning
leaves the reader with anxiety over who it will be.
In these first few paragraphs he also gives us some sense of the
root of his lust for these young girls. His early failed attempts at intimacy
seem to have frozen his sexual desires, leaving him unable to have satisfying
relations with adults – a situation reminiscent of Blanche DuBois in Tennessee
Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. He
is, however, willing to resign himself to sexual relations with Lolita’s mother
in order to have more free access to her daughter. He sees it as a stroke of
luck when she is killed and he is left as sole carer of this pre-pubescent
girl. He is often distressed by the thought that he’ll only have a fixed amount
of time to enjoy her before she matures and is ruined, and he doesn’t want to
risk missing a moment of it. He even considers a potential solution of not
merely discarding her once fully developed, but impregnating her in the hopes
that he would find their offspring similarly alluring, a truly depraved plan.
One aspect of this novel that many find unsettling is that the way in which
the characters are drawn leads you to almost feel for Humbert. He sees Lolita
as a temptress and it is all too easy to forget, in part one at least, that she
is an innocent twelve year old who he is taking advantage of for his own
disturbed pleasure. As the novel progresses, however, you get a real sense of
the claustrophobic nature of their life as they travel seemingly endlessly
around America. She has nowhere else to go, and with her mother dead and ties
with her friends cut, truly she is trapped and at the mercy of her middle aged
captor. As her unhappiness begins to reveal itself more obviously Humbert
becomes more manipulative and abusive. There are a lot of scenes that are
uncomfortable to read. He does seem to feel some compassion and regret at the
misery he causes her, but then his lust takes over and she becomes little more
than a vehicle for his pleasure again. As time passes he comes to realize that
he may have broken something deep within her. It’s telling of what he’s done to
her that her eventual rescuer, and the man she loved, was arguably even more depraved
than Humbert. He certainly sees himself as morally superior to Quilty in the
way he treats his nymphets. Are the levels of moral corruption relative?
I’m not quite sure what I was expecting when I picked up this book,
but it seemed an entirely different experience to what I’d imagined. A complex
novel of psychologies and morals that is at turns humorous, intelligent, and
disturbing in a mix rarely found in fiction. This is a book that will make you
think and question your own morals. Deservedly one of the most well-known
novels of the twentieth century, don’t rely on hearsay – give the book itself
the attention it deserves.
Pick up a copy:
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