Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Department of English

and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Veronika Blahůšková

Becoming Lolita

Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: doc.PhDr., Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr.

2009

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,

using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Author’s signature

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Tomáš Pospíšil for professional and inspiring guidance and Tomáš Kačer for

introducing me to Dolores Haze and teaching me how to think about her.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

1.1 Lolita

1.2 Two stories of Dolores, and of Lolita

2. Humbert – the Personage

2.1 Identification with the Narrator

2.2 The Superior One

2.3 John Ray, Jr.

3. The Spell of Art

3.1 Art versus the News

3.2 Foregrounding and Intrusions

4. The Possibilities of the Narrator

4.1 Power of the Storyteller

4.2 Interpreting Dolores

5. Conclusion

Appendix

Bibliography

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1. Introduction

1.1 Lolita

Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male is the most popular work by

the Russian-American émigré writer Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (23rd

April 1899

– 2nd

July 1977). The story of the novel is narrated by its main character Humbert

Humbert, who is obsessed with nymphets (a specific kind of little girls).

The middle aged intellectual Humbert Humbert moves from France to the

United States, where he by chance encounters Dolores Haze, a 12 year old nymphet and

a daughter of a widow Charlotte Haze. Humbert Humbert decides to marry Mrs. Haze

just to be close to her child whom he adores. After some time of married life, Mrs.

Humbert finds her husband’s diary and discovers his real intentions concerning her

daughter and the marriage. But before Mrs. Humbert could take any action, she is killed

in a car accident and Humbert becomes guardian of her daughter.

He takes the girl on a cross country trip and they travel from one motel to

another. During this journey, the girl and her guardian become lovers. They have their

first sexual intercourse in the Enchanted Hunters hotel. But the coexistence between

Dolores and Humbert gets complicated, rough, and even violent. At last, the teenage girl

flees with another man and Humbert spends a lot of time trying to find her, but in vain.

Humbert meets Dolores once again when she is married and pregnant and begs

him for money. He asks her to go away with him, but she refuses. He gives her the

money and in return gets the name of the man for whom she has abandoned him – Clare

Quilty. Humbert finds Quilty out and after a fierce struggle shots him dead. When he

confusedly drives form the scene of the crime, ignoring traffic rules, he gets arrested

and afterwards charged with murder.

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Throughout the narrative Humbert repeatedly refers to the imagined jury that is

to judge him during his trial, and he starts to write the story as a defence of his deeds. At

the end of the novel, the readers learn that both Dolores and Humbert died, she in

childbirth, he in prison.

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1.2 Two Stories of Dolores, and of Lolita

Nabokov’s Lolita is just one book that contains only a single story. The basic

events of the story are quite clear – a middle-aged intellectual marries a middleclass

woman to get nearer her underage daughter whom he adores, the wife dies, the man

becomes a guardian of the girl child, unlawful sexual relationship develops between the

girl and the man, the girl flees with another man, and the former lover murders his

follower. From this brief but apposite account, the widower seems to play the role of an

antagonist, as, strictly factually, he is a murderer and a rapist. How is it then possible

that some readers of Lolita consider him to be a victim, while others view him as the

culprit?

As Guthrie words it, “there is” and always have been “a debate about whether

Lolita seduced and destroyed Humbert or if Humbert molested and destroyed Lolita”

(159). Some declare that “[Dolores] is…prisoner in his clutches held by her youth and

ignorance” (Lokrantz 76), while others unshakably proclaim that “the whorelet Lolita

may at best be described as an average American teenager” (Christensen 38) and that it

is her who seduces the fifty year old intellectual. Some literary critics emphatically

describe Humbert’s suffering, such as Hyde in this excerpt: “Humbert’s seduction by

Lolita, for whom sex is a summer camp game, forbidden by dull adults … , opens the

door not to freedom but to the padded cell of gloomy lust in which the enchanted hunter

becomes a hunted enchanter” (120), others, such as for example Elizabeth Patnoe,

lament Dolores’ terrible suffering and disapprove its representation in the novel and by

a novel per se.

The substantial difference in the opinion of not only ordinary readers but also the

literary critics is made possible just and only by the skills and narratorial powers of the

protagonist and narrator in one person, Humbert Humbert. His abilities in writing, his

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knowledge, and his position of the interpreter create an extraordinarily complex

narrative that could be read in many, at times fully opposite ways. Thomières writes that

“[t]he whole novel can … be seen as an attempt at seducing readers by means of flattery

and wit, as well as selective and ambivalent information” (167). This thesis attempts to

reveal and examine all the factors and strategies that enable the narrator to seduce his

readers and divide his audience into two groups so substantially different in their

opinion on the novel.

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2. Humbert Humbert—the Person

2.1 Identification with the Narrator

The stark facts are clear: a middle-aged man commits a crime by having sexual

intercourse with a minor. This is undisputable. But all the rest is disputed extensively.

How is it possible that a book has so vastly different interpretations? How can one

account for the fact that some readers view Dolores as the victim and other ascribe this

attribute to Humbert? One of the reasons for this is that the story is told in the first

person. Humbert Humbert introduces into it a sentimental item; he introduces a

personality – himself. He ceases to be a criminal and becomes a teller of confession, a

new acquaintance, and maybe even a friend of the readers. To manage this, it suffices to

narrate.

It might be sufficient to do even less than that – to be a protagonist. Most readers

would rather identify with Frodo, than Gollum, with Harry Potter rather than Draco

Malfoy, in short with the character from whose point of view the story is presented,

with the character who is the most discussed in the book and whose views and feelings

are the most clear to the reader. Although neither Gollum nor Draco is completely evil,

although both of them are only typically humanly flawed, they are generally perceived

as antagonists. The foundation for this perspective is in their often being in conflict with

the main character who himself is not a saint. Percy Lubbock describes the reception of

the main character by readers in this way: “It is so easy to construct the idea of the

exquisite creature, that she seems to step from the pages of her own accord; I, as I read,

am aware of nothing but that a new acquaintance is gradually becoming better and

better known to me” (8). As human beings are sociable, they evidently look for new

friends not only in real life, but also in fiction. And who else could be a better candidate

for befriending than the one with whom the readers spend most of their time? Thus the

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reader naturally sides with the protagonist and denounces the other characters who

compete for his approval. The influence of the main character furthermore inevitably

rises when he is given the opportunity to narrate.

Readers tend to perceive the protagonist as a likeable person and when placed

into a situation where the adequacy of their sympathy is possibly questionable, they tend

to be confused rather then resolute. Schulz for example talks about “[s]tudents’

bewilderment at their ambivalent reaction to Humbert Humbert, whom they recognize

as the sympathetic protagonist but whom their moral training tells them is repulsive,”

and adds that it “is a recurrent situation in college classes where Lolita is taught” (144-

5), which I may confirm. In literature seminars where students are forced to think about

their perception of the book and talk about it, they are, as readers, bewildered. But many

other readers are not university students and no one forces them to think deeper. Their

conclusions are much more subconscious and their unexpressed bewilderment easily

silenced.

Humbert opens himself up to the reader, he shares his opinions, ideas, and his

fears; he presents his sense of humor and personal style, in other words, he does what

friends usually do. Phelan, when explaining his theory of positive and negative bonding

even points out that it does not matter, whether the protagonist’s evaluations and

comments are cohesive, or whether they contradict each other. The bonding effect is

guaranteed by the mere process of sharing thoughts:

In bonding unreliability, the discrepancies between the narrator’s

reports, interpretations or evaluations and the inference of authorial

audience have the paradoxical result of reducing the interpretive,

affective, or ethical distance between the narrator and the authorial

audience. In other words, although the authorial audience recognizes

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the narrator’s unreliability, the unreliability includes some

information that the implied author—and thus the authorial

audience—endorses. (225)

Therefore it does not matter, whether the protagonist is a villain or a saint, for him, the

only substantial thing to do is to speak his mind. The classic of literal theory – Wayne

C. Booth – presents a similar opinion: “[i]f an author wants intense sympathy for

characters who do not have strong virtues to recommend them, then the psychic

vividness of prolonged and deep inside views will help him. If an author wants to earn

readers confusion, then unreliable narration may help him” (377-8). Booth expresses a

similar view also in this passage: “inside view can build sympathy even for the most

vicious character. When properly used, this effect can be of immeasurable value in

forcing us to see the human worth of a character whose actions, objectively considered,

we would deplore” (378). Humbert as not only the protagonist but also the narrator has

at his own disposal an infinite number of opportunities to present his point of view, be

it in the form of direct proclamation or just in the way of wording a description of a

person, a place or a situation. Humbert’s unique power of the narrator is further

described in chapter 4.

Many other authors place high importance on the protagonist’s strategy of

sharing thoughts and sentiments with the readers, especially when humour is concerned.

Humour and specifically irony are thought to be a strong bond in relationship.

Thomières mentions Humbert’s jokes and believes that this joke-sharing turns the

readers into ‘the accomplices’ of Humberts’: “[w]e, readers, are invited to feel superior,

share the joke with Humbert and become his accomplice in his hunt and possession of

the nymphet” (165-6), while Booth stresses the role of irony: “many of the works in the

unreliable mode depend for their effect on ironic collusion between the author and his

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readers” (391). Humbert Humbert uses irony so widely and professionally that it is

almost impossible to keep pace with him. He even uses irony against the readers and

still manages to maintain the reader-narrator friendship. As a matter of fact, Humbert’s

ridiculing of the readers constitutes just another strategy for gaining their sympathies.

2.2 The superior one

Jennifer Elizabeth Green describes Humbert as “a man who contradicts social

stereotypes of a criminal. Eloquent, cultured, and humorous, [who] challenges our

acceptance of strict taboos by becoming the likeable protagonist of his ‘confession’”

(8). Humbert’s sense of humour was already discussed in the previous section. Now it

remains to clarify not only the role of his eloquence and refinement, but also of his high

education, style, taste, and the feeling of superiority he derives from them and

constantly exposes to other characters and to readers.

Humbert obviously has an urgent need to ridicule and denounce others. In order

to do this he does not use primitive vulgar language but an elegant, complicated, and

ornate style. The effect definitely differs from that of a simple swearing. Humbert

derides other characters in a polished and educated way. When he talks about a woman

that helps him with cooking and cleaning, he for example uses these words:

“charwoman and cook of sorts whom I had inherited with the vacuum cleaner from the

previous tenants” (Nabokov 204). The insult is solely in the linguistic play of laying the

vacuum cleaner – a thing, on the same level as a charwoman – a living being.

It is sometimes hard to see the rudeness behind the mist of fine words and

sentence structures. Even if the insult is decoded, the fact that it was delivered in such a

highbrow style makes it only the more offending. It is definitely more humiliating to be

insulted by a university professor than by a naughty child. When Humbert talks about

Trapp’s supposed former car, he writes that “the Aztec Red convertible…contained four

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or five loud young people of several sexes” (Nabokov 258) and thus attracts more

attention to the unusual wording (people usually sit in a car, rather than are contained in

it and so on) than to the message itself, though the slight offence does not disappear, it

is still there.

Humbert does not build his image of a highly cultivated person only on elegant

coarseness. He constantly exhibits his intelligence and knowledge by talking about

personalities only few readers might be familiar with: “Dr. Gratiano Forbeson…Its

Italian Comedy connotations could not fail to strike me, of course” (Nabokov 283),

although they definitely do fail to strike most readers. He uses metaphors common men

would hardly think of using, such as: “Whereupon the lighted image would move and

Eve would revert to a rib” (Nabokov 301), or “In comparison to her, Valechka was a

Schlegel, and Charlotte a Hegel” (Nabokov 295). The former, less strikingly erudite

quotation obviously refers to the Bible, which everybody knows but not many unlearned

people do commonly paraphrase. The latter is much more intellectually demanding as it

compares two philosophers who are in themselves quite well known but hardly anyone

knows their philosophy so thoroughly to be able to compare them or to even match

them to people they know. Thus Humbert Humbert creates for himself an image of a

person so educated, a person of such a great mind and high thoughts, that he can even

occasionally afford to insult people in the ordinary way, writing descriptions like:

“unsmiling blond bitch of a secretary” (Nabokov 273), without loosing sympathies of

his readers.

Another method that Humbert uses to demonstrate his high level of education

and greatness of mind is the employment of unusual vocabulary. When he has a choice

between two words, such as ‘polio’ and ‘poliomyelitis’, he always picks out the one that

is longer, less widely used, and less comprehensible – in this case ‘poliomyelitis’

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(Nabokov 258). Senderovich comments on this tendency: “Nabokov loved linguistic

varieties and ruffled many feathers by routinely using words unfamiliar to well-

educated people. We should never assume that we understand the Nabokovian word

only on the basis of common usage, having looked it up in a dictionary” (75).

Nabokov’s Humbert uses throughout the novel many of these ‘unfamiliar’ words, such

as: umbra (9), diaphanous (30), crenulated (42), nacreous (46), ullulations (58),

pederosis (61), saturnalia (156), coevals (168), areolas (187), bi-iliac (199), mythopoeic

(211), cryptochomism (258), logodaedaly and logomancy (284), undinist (284), or

pointillistic (313). Other words of Humbert’s diction are understandable, but rather

unusual or obviously of his own creation: pugilist (31), ennui (33), manatee (189),

nincompoop (211), gluteal parts (274) or Proustianized and Procrusteanized (301)1.

Humbert uses them in spite of their having plain synonyms in the language. The point is

that Humbert does not desire to sound plain. His aim is to sound educated – more

educated than the readers, to constantly remind them that he is much cleverer than them.

He uses the rare words as just another device to show his superiority.

A tool very specific for Humbert’s style and another example of his strategic

techniques is the extended use of French language. He, as a narrator, often writes in

French, he also quotes other characters speaking in French, and he never provides

translations. In some cases, he uses a French word instead of a very similar English one,

so that the passage remains fully understandable for all readers but the narrator sounds

more educated, as he is able to use foreign vocabulary instead of English. Some

examples of this usage would be: tic nerveux (181), rentier (198), émigré (222), or

maman (232). Humbert also uses short French phrases that are quite unintelligible to

readers unfamiliar with the language. Although these phrases do not move the plot in

1 An illustrative list of all the unusual words is to be found in the appendix.

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any direction and so do not handicap any readers, they must be quite misleading and

confusing for those who do not understand them. And they certainly cause that Humbert

seems to be exceedingly clever for his capacity to write them. The examples are as

follows: [t]ant pis (21), fruit vert (42), soi-disant (165), raison d’être (174), comme on

dit (176), à propos de rien (178), mais je divague (182), comme il faut (282).2 Still the

most confusing and embarrassing for those readers who do not understand French very

well, must be Humbert’s tendency to employ not only single words or phrases in French

but whole sentences. In this respect, Humbert is quite unmerciful. He uses elaborate

sentences containing unusual grammatical structures, which are otherwise scarcely used

even by the native speakers. More over, these untranslated sentences are often rather

important for the development of the plot or portrayal of a character. It is impossible to

understand them from context or to comprehend their meaning even with a dictionary or

sometimes even with a good knowledge of the language. By the employment of such

sentences, and in one case a whole stanza of a poem, Humbert very obviously shows

part of the readership its inferiority in being unable to understand rather long and

sometimes even quite important passages of the book they are just reading. He also very

much strengthens his image of superiority and eruditeness. There are some examples of

the whole French sentences that are used in the book: “[c]e qui me rend folle, c’est que

je ne sais à quoi tu pense quand tu es comme ça” (100), “mon pauvre ami, je ne vous ai

jamais revu et quoiqu’il y ait bien peu de chance que vous voyiez mon livre, permettez-

moi de vous dire que je vous serre la main bien cordialement, et que toutes mes fillettes

vous saluent” (230), and the stanza of the poem: “[l]’autre soir un air froid d’opéra

m’alita: / Son félé—bien fol et qui s’y fie! / Il neige, le décor s’écroule, Lolita! / Lolita,

qu’ai-je fait de ta vie?” (292). The last example is for the readers even harder to

2 The complete list of all the French words used by the narrator is to be found in the appendix

section.

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decipher than the others. It is not only written in foreign language but it also represents

a piece of poetry that is commonly understood to be rather difficult to comprehend for

nonnative speakers of any foreign language.

Humbert does not operate only with French language. He also perfects his image

of an intellectual by using Latin words, for example: pavor nocturnus (77), gluteal

sulcus (121), and once even a whole Latin-like sequence: “Seva ascendes, pulsata,

brulans, kitzelans, dementissima. Elevator clatterans, pausa, clatterans, populus in

corridoro. Hanc nisi mors mihi adiment nemo! Juncea puellula, jo pensavo fondissime,

nobserva nihil quidquam” (136)3. Although some words are typically Latin, such as nisi,

mihi, nihil or quidquam, others seem to be just Humbert’s playful variations on the

Latin morphology and vocabulary rules. The word elevator, for example, existed in

Latin and had a meaning very close to that Humbert ascribes it, but definitely not the

same. In Latin, elevator was a person elevating or supporting something or someone.

Humbert uses it to denote what in British English would be called ‘a lift’– an electronic

device definitely unknown to Romans.

The list of foreign languages employed is still not fully exhausted. Besides

French and Latin, the narrator once uses even German, specifically a phrase “[s]treng

verboten” (314). The readers have in front of them an image of a narrator who can

speak French, comprehends Latin and probably also a bit of German. More over, the

reader does not understand him very often, be it for the use of erudite words, the use of

words Humbert created himself, because of his employment of foreign languages, or his

allusion to knowledge the reader could hardly share. Thus Humbert gets himself into a

position of great superiority over the reader and definitely makes him uneasy and

3 The complete list is in the Appendix section.

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derives his attention from what he might call unimportant details to his complicated,

undecipherable language.

Marcus describes the narrator’s behavior in this way: “he seems to enjoy fooling

his narratee and appearing cleverer than them” (197). Humbert’s attempts to appear

more sophisticated than the readers are not confined to the experiments with languages.

The narrator also exuberates with a very detailed knowledge. His specialty is everything

concerning girls. He provides the readers with very precise data hardly anyone could

know by heart, without looking them up in an encyclopedia: “The bud-stage of breast

development appears early (10.7 years) in the sequence of somatic changes

accompanying pubescence. And the next maturation item available is the first

appearance of pigmented pubic hair (11.2 years)” (Nabokov 19). He can moreover

describe quite ordinary bodily changes with astounding scientism: “Sundaes cause acne.

The excess of the oily substance called sebum which nourishes the hair follicle of the

skin creates, when too profuse, an irritation that opens the way to infection” (Nabokov

44). By the exhibition of this knowledge Humbert again tries to humble his readers and

to appear in their eyes superior. No one knows as much as Humbert does about

pubescence and few could describe the formation of a pimple so professionally. The

effect is even greater when it is taken into account that Humbert is not a physician or a

scientist, in whom this knowledge would by natural.

Humbert is also a man of great taste; he is an artist in a sense, a man of letters,

which also gives him some more points in the eyes of the readers. Marcus thinks that

[Humbert] relies in a convention characteristic of various aesthetic

theories, distinguishing men of taste—exceptional individuals with

extraordinary ability to discriminate between the beautiful and the

ugly—from the rest of humanity, who lack taste. Humbert believes

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that he is part of a group of adult, insane, melancholic, and sensitive

artists who are capable of identifying nymphs and, as a result, to desire

them sexually (19). (189)

Humbert even invents a new discipline in which, as its inventor, he can hardly be

anything else than an expert. Throughout the whole book, he can then enlighten the

readers into this new discipline and gain even stronger position as a tutor and a

specialist in this discipline of his own, unknown to the rest of the world.

He starts by debasing the ‘ordinary’ sexual activities the rest of the humankind

engages in and kindly revealing them that he knows something much more enjoyable

than these boring activities of theirs:

I am ready to believe that the sensations I derived from natural

fornication were much the same as those known to normal big males

consorting with their normal big mates in that routine rhythm that

shakes the world. The trouble was that those gentlemen had not, and I

had, caught glimpses of an incomparably more poignant bliss. The

dimmest of my polutive dreams was a thousand times more dazzling

than all the adultery the most virile writer of genius or the most

talented impotent might imagine. (Nabokov 17)

Humbert quite freely uses a word “routine” when talking about his readers’ sexual

activities, whereas when describing his own, he uses words like “incomparably more

poignant bliss” and he characterizes his dreams as “thousand times more dazzling”.

Now the reader is not only less clever, educated and knowledgeable than the

protagonist, but even his sexual activities are looked down upon.

Humbert continues in explaining the readers that they “must understand that in

the possession and thralldom of a nymphet the enchanted traveler stands, as it were,

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beyond happiness. For there is no other bliss on earth comparable to that of fondling a

nymphet. It is hors concours, that bliss, it belongs to another class, another plane of

sensitivity” (Nabokov 188), to arouse in them the sense of their inferiority. What else

could they possibly feel when they do not know the biggest happiness on earth and

could probably never do so even in the future. The narrator then feeds this newly

aroused inferiority by from time to time casually stating some inconspicuous little detail

concerning his newly invented ‘nymphology’, such as: “Hysterical little nymphs might,

I knew, run up all kinds of temperature – even exceeding a fatal count” (Nabokov 273).

He does not let the readers forget that he is better, that he knows more not only about

language and culture, but also in this brand new discipline of his.

Humbert also often builds on his exceptionality and his being an artist. Society is

usually quite wiling to close one or even both its eyes when great exceptional artists are

concerned. This he very well knows and exploits. He lists all the great personalities of

history whose peculiar sexual orientations and habits the public does never castigate:

Here is Virgil who could the nymphet sing in single tone, but probably

preferred a lad’s perineum. Here are two of King Akhnaten’s and

Queen Nefertiti’s pre-nubile Nile daughters (the royal couple had a

litter of six), wearing nothing but many neckleses of bright beads,

relaxed on cushions, intact after three thousand years, with their soft

brown puppy-bodies, cropped hair and long ebony eyes…After all,

Dante fell madly in love with his Beatrice when she was nine, a

sparkling girleen, painted and lovely, and bejeweled, in a crimson

frock, and this was in 1274, in Florence, at a private feast in the merry

month of May. And when Petrarch fell madly in love with his

Laureen, she was a fair-haired nymphet of twelve running in the wind,

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in the pollen and dust, a flower in flight, in the beautiful plain as

described from the hills of Vaucluse. (Nabokov 18-9)

Later he supplements to his collection of celebrities also this passage: “Virginia was not

quite fourteen when Harry Edgar possessed her” (Nabokov 46). Green comments on

this tendency of the narrator to point out all the famous people known for their unusual

sexual practices in these words: “We are moved by the shaky justification for his crimes

consisting of cultural differences and the comparison of himself to artists such as Poe,

Dante, and Petrarch, thereby constructing the claim that as an émigré artist … he exists

in a realm outside of social and American mores” (9). Eylon in a way shares Green’s

opinion of a privileged group of artists when he writes: “[Humbert] repeats the idea of

his privileged access to the truth, available only to artists and madmen” (167). Thus

Humbert claims his superiority again, this time by being the privileged artist.

When Humbert Humbert writes that “[t]he gentle and dreary regions through

which [he] crept were the patrimonies of poet—not crime’s prowling ground” (Nabokov

149), he reveals the attentive readers another reason of the permanent emphasis on his

exceptionality. It is not only just another way of causing the readers to feel inferior and

to be rather benevolent as they have the honour of encountering a poet; it is also an

argument against a possible guilt they might discern on Humbert’s part. Humbert

explains them that he moves in the area of poets and artists, in the area completely

foreign to the readers. If it reminds them of that of the criminals, it is naturally just a

misunderstanding. The narrator in a way builds himself a bulletproof armour cast from

his language, cultural and epistemic superiority.

2.3 John Ray, Jr.

Many of the narrator’s techniques used to form a favourable impression on the

readers have been already covered in this chapter. It now remains to refer to just one

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another, this time quite an original one. To highlight his intelligence, style and

superiority, the narrator makes use of a fictional editor John Ray, Jr., Ph.D.

John Ray is of course not obviously silly or disagreeable. He is being all this in a

much more strategic, unobtrusive way. Ray’s unpleasantness is achieved for instance by

his tendency to moralize, the example of which is to be found in these passages:

“[Humbert] is horrible, he is abject” (Nabokov 3), or “Lolita’ should make all of us—

parents, social workers, educators—apply ourselves with still greater vigilance and

vision to the task of bringing up a better generation in a safer world” (Nabokov 4). The

name of the editor itself functions as a device to ridicule him. According to Pekka

Tammi, “[t]he fictive prefacer in Lolita—‘John Ray, Jr., Ph.D.’ (JR+Jr: the burlesque

name is in itself a small clue to the reader)—is of course patently absurd figure” (298-

9). As Tammi also points out, Ray strikes the readers as being rather foolish, when he

does not notice any of Humbert’s verbal attacks on him:

In his own narrative Humbert will expressly lampoon the findings of

Ray’s scientific authority…He will sardonically address ‘the able

psychiatrist who studied [his] case’ (163)—the editor himself—and

repeatedly point out that he has quite deliberately constructed episodes in

his narrative as parodies of standard Freudian ‘cases’ (e.g. 36, 124, 163-4,

211, 244, 248, 251… ) That the fictive editor misconstrues all such clues

in the edited text clearly renders suspect any reliability that his own

discourse might hold. (299)

By not seeing that Humbert ridicules him, Ray demonstrates that he is less clever than

him.

The readers have a choice to make. Should they favour the clever, poetic and

slightly naughty narrator or the silly, moralizing killjoy editor? According to Phelan the

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readers are going to give preference to Humbert: “[B]onding is also encouraged by

optimistic comparison with the narration of John Ray, Jr.” (234). His reason for the

opinion is above all Ray’s incongruity of style:

[T]he most relevant feature of [John Ray’s] narration is the

inconsistency of his style. It varies from a clumsy formality (“the two

titles under which the writer of the present note received the strange

pages it perambulates”; “this commentator may be excused for

repeating” [3, 5]) to a straightforward effectiveness … [and] to the

repetition of platitudes …The result is a narrator whose perceptions and

evaluations we question, even if we do not have enough information to

construct clear alternative views. (234)

Therefore the readers could hardly choose the incoherent, silly and moralistic Ray.

Tammi agrees with Phelan when he writes that “the reader implied by the total

design of Lolita will hardly associate himself with the naïve audience addressed by its

editor, choosing rather to side with the author from whose point the addresses are

mocked” (229), because it feels better to be mocked by a genius but still feel clever

enough to be on his side, than to accept the role of the nice, naïve nitwit. Even

Kauffman is quite sure in the readers’ decision concerning the credibility of the editor:

“The choice between Ray’s foreword (literature as a vehicle for social change) and

Nabokov’s afterword (literature as a self-referential artifice) involve seemingly

irreconcilable differences, and, since Ray is the butt of parody, readers seem willing to

go to any length to avoid being identified with him” (53, qtd. in Green 2). Thus

Humbert Humbert does not support his credibility just by his elegant and educated

language, his knowledge, and his exceptionality. He does so also by providing the

24

readers with an excessively silly figure. And the readers cannot do otherwise than to

compare. And the outcome cannot be anything else than the victory for Humbert.

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3. The Spell of Art and Style

3.1 Art vs. the News

When read in the newspapers, the account of Humbert’s life with Dolores would

definitely arouse more decided emotions than it does in the form of a novel. And

Humbert’s novel is moreover far from ordinary. He uses a style that enables him to

distract the focus of his readers even further from the stark facts than if he narrated in

the common style. As Wellek puts it, “all art, to be sure, by giving aesthetic distance, by

shaping and articulating, makes that pleasant to contemplate which would be painful to

experience or even, in life, to witness” (213). In other words, the more the readers are

aware of Lolita’s being a piece of art, the more artistic the novel appears, the less are the

readers disconcerted by its content.

Gerard de Vries highlights the importance of the narrative distance from reality

and the fact that it is not perceived as a piece of news or a real biography: “[h]ad Lolita

been a real memoir, anyone of sound mind would refuse to read it, notwithstanding the

brilliance of its style, the richness of Humbert’s observations, and the exemplary

dissection of his urges. But as Lolita is a work of art we are entangled ‘in elaborate and

enchanting game’” (148). The crucial role of the constant reminder of Lolita’s being a

work of art is stressed also by Lokrantz: “[b]ecause Humbert is a character of fiction,

and because we are made to ‘see’ it, we are able to pity him in his iniquities since we

acquire emotional distance from his deeds, and perceive him, not as a monster, but as a

pathetic, shabby, sick man. Nabokov has succeeded in providing distance in one area for

the sake of involvement in another” (28). Humbert, by using elaborate ornate style,

prevents the readers from becoming excessively immersed in the story, from accepting

it as almost real, and particularly from judging it as almost real. If as Lubbock says,

“[the readers] are much more inclined to forget, if [they] can, that the book is an object

26

of art, and to treat it as a piece of the life around [them]” (6), Humbert’s task is to

skillfully prevent the readers from doing so.

If the readers judged the novel as if real, their reaction would be, unless they

were themselves nympholepts, fully reversed. Patnoe adverts to this opinion when she

writes that “[m]any…men praise the book’s artistry, Nabokov’s brilliant language. One

associate said he loved the book—his favourite for its artistry…I asked him how he

could feel so much pleasure from a book with this content. He said, ‘It’s just a book.’”

(par. 15). Humbert shows the readers his abilities of a poet; he transfers them into the

world of poetry and art, and constantly reminds them where they are. And as he, himself

writes: “[e]mphatically, no killers are we. Poets never kill” (Nabokov, 98). Lolita, by

becoming a piece of art, by becoming the work of poetry, loses the possibility of being

viewed as an account of a crime.

3.2 Foregrounding and Intrusions

Lokrantz believes that “[Nabokov] take[s] subject matters which might be

extremely distasteful for many readers (e.g., statutory rape, murder, incest) and cause[s]

the reader to feel sympathy or pity for the perpetrators of these deeds” (7). According to

him, “[t]hese feeling on the part of the reader are made possible by Nabokov’s stylistic

devices, which always points back to the fiction of it all” (7). This “pointing back to the

fiction of it all” is called foregrounding. Mukařovský defines this conception as “the

opposite of automatization, that is, the deautomatization of an act;…automatization

schematizes an event; foregrounding means the violation of the scheme” (168). He

further explains it in these words: “In poetic language foregrounding achieves

maximum intensity to the extent of pushing communication into background as the

objective of expression and of being used for its own sake; it is not used in the service

of communication, but in order to place in the foreground the act of expression, the act

27

of speech itself” (169). Thus by using elaborate poetic language, the narrator drives the

attention of his audience from what is communicated to how it is communicated – from

Humbert’s undisputable offense to his flowery language.

Humbert’s narrative is full of exquisite examples of foregrounding in all its

forms. The narrator for instance plays with syntax and instead of using sentences with

subject, object and complements, he writes in the style of stage instructions: “Main

character: Humbert the Humbert. Time: Sunday morning in June. Place: sunlit living

room. Props: old, candy-striped davenport, magazines, phonoghraph, Mexican knick-

knacks…” (Nabokov 63). He also uses very formal and impersonal register, which often

seems unsuitable for the topic described. For instance when writing about his habit of

crying at the end of sexual intercourse, the narrator uses these words: “I have the

ability…of shedding torrents of tears throughout the other tempest” (Nabokov 236).

Although the topic discussed is highly personal, the words used for its discussion

possess quite the opposite quality. The effect is that of a rather absurd contrast which

attracts the readers’ attention.

Another form of foregrounding is complicated sentence structure. Humbert

conveys completely ordinary information in the style of classical German philosophers.

He employs exceedingly long complex sentences to convey an altogether trivial

information, for example that he does not particularly like the appearance of fire

hydrants: “staring at the rain, at the inundated sidewalk, at a hydrant: a hideous thing,

really, painted a thick silver and red, extending the red stumps of its arms to be

varnished by the rain which like stylized blood dripped upon its argent chains. No

wonder that stooping beside those nightmare cripples is taboo” (Nabokov 119), or to

fantasize about the possibilities of transparent walls: “[a]h, gentle drivers driving

through summer’s black nights, what frolics, what twists of lust, you might see from

28

your impeccable highways if Kumfy Kabins were suddenly drained of their pigments

and became as transparent as boxes of glass” (Nabokov 131). When he expresses his

discontent about his wife’s changed appearance, he uses similarly complex sentence

structure:

The bleached curl revealed its melanic root; the down turned to prickles

on a shaved shin; the mobile moist mouth, no matter how I stuffed it

with love, disclosed ignominiously its resemblance to the corresponding

part in a treasured portrait of her toadlike dead mama; and presently,

instead of a pale little gutter girl, Humbert Humbert had on his hands a

large, puffy, short-legged, big-breasted and practically brainless baba.

(Nabokov 26)

Instead of simply stating the simple facts he indulges himself into a complicated

description that exhibits rather its complexness of style than its content.

The narrator uses similar tactics when he mentions an accidental encounter at the

men’s room of the Enchanted Hunters hotel:

I drifted to the Men’s Room. There, a person in clerical black—a ‘hearty

party’ comme on dit—checking with the assistance of Vienna, if it was

still there, inquired of me how I had liked Dr. Boyd’s talk, and looked

puzzled when I (King Sigmund the Second) said Boyd was quite a boy.

Upon which, I neatly chucked the tissue paper I had been wiping my

sensitive fingertips with into receptacle provided for it, and sallied

lobbyward. (Nabokov 142)

To discomfit the reader, Humbert does not go to the bathroom, but he “drifts” there. He

plays with sounds by purposefully using words that sound and look similar (Boyd, boy),

instead of throwing a tissue paper into a litter basket, he throws it into a “receptacle

29

provided for it”, and instead of going towards the lobby he goes “lobbyward”. He plays

with the language in the highest degree imaginable, though he is talking about a mere

visit of a bathroom. Interestingly enough, during this account of his, Dolores lies

sleeping in their hotel room and their sexual relation is just about to be initiated in a few

more hours. The readers quite easily forget this when they are so elaborately and

divertingly told about Humbert’s going to micturate.

Not only foregrounding but also other devices are used to distract the readers’

attention in the crucial passage of the book when Humbert finally attempts to execute

his wishes at the Enchanted Hunters hotel. One of these devices is the intrusion of the

narratorial voice, or, more precisely, it is the process when “[t]he voice of an author or

his fictitious narrator(s) breaks into the tale and addresses the reader directly” (Lokrantz

13). According to Lokrantz, “[t]his manner of suspending the story, while the voice

digresses for shorter or longer time, is a method of openly calling to mind that the

reader is experiencing fiction, that he is partaking of a product of the author’s creative

ability” (13). Intrusions of the narratorial voice are a subtype of foregrounding as they

too attract the attention to the form rather than to the content. Tammi highlights the

ability of intrusions to attract attention to the narrator’s present state and to derive it

from the narrated situation:

[A]ny reference to ‘the present’ as distinct from the narrated ‘past’ may

serve to remind us of N-agent’s own situation behind the memoiristic

discourse. The central opposition between these instances is always

between a temporally distanced ‘world’ (in the sense of NW) and the

particular moment when an aspect of past is evoked by N … Similarly,

any reference to the concrete problem of narrative-making are effective

in bringing about the opposition. (160)

30

Thus intrusions provide the narrator not only with another technique of foregrounding

the form on the expense of the contents, but also with a device to draw the readers’

attention from the problematic narrated past to the narrator’s present.

Humbert uses intrusion for example when he wants to mask the subjectivity of

his report: “I cannot tell my learned reader (whose eyebrows, I suspect, have by now

traveled all the way to the back of his bald head), I cannot tell him how the knowledge

came to me…for now she was not really looking at my scribble, but waiting with

curiosity and composure…for the glamorous lodger to do what he was dying to do”

(Nabokov 52-3). Humbert desires to convince the readers that Dolores wants him to act.

But the reason why is Humbert so certain of this knowledge of her desire is entirely

unclear, as Dolores does not instruct him in any way. To obscure the fact that his

judgment is in this respect highly subjective, the narrator addresses the readers directly

and turn their attention from the described event. Thus he has better chances that his

readers’ will not detect the vagueness present.

Intrusions play crucial role in the Enchanted Hunters hotel passage. According to

Lokrantz, “while [some of Humbert’s intrusions are] being used for foregrounding, they

perform a structural duty as well. They are used rhetorically to allay suspense. They

have a momentary calming effect on an otherwise explosive scene” (29). When

describing the last night before the beginning of the sexual relationship, Humbert very

often breaks the accumulated tension and suspense by addressing the readers or his

fictional jurors in this or similar manner: “Gentlewomen of the jury! Bear with me!

Allow me to take just a tiny bit of your precious time!” (Nabokov 139). The description

of Humbert’s trip to the bathroom, which was mentioned previously, also belongs to

this section and serves as an alleviator of tense and focus. Lokrantz believes that “[t]he

fever pitch of th[ese] long scene[s] would be quite unbearable if we were not allowed

31

these breaks…Without the distance caused by th[ese] intrusion[s], the whole scene of a

seduction of a minor girl could easily become repulsive to the reader” (29). The passage

of the seduction is so lengthy only because of these digressions. The sexual scene itself,

although as well interrupted by many intrusions, is curiously short.

In some of his intrusions, the narrator just distracts the readers by suddenly

appealing to the fictional jurors, such as in: “I have to read carefully. I have to speak in

whisper. Oh you, veteran crime reporter, you grave old usher, you once popular

policeman, now in solitary confinement after gracing that school crossing for years, you

wretched emeritus read to by a boy! It would never do, would it, to have you fellows

fall madly in love with my Lolita!” (Nabokov 151-2). In other intrusions he not only

addressees the readers or jurors but manages to vindicate himself as well: “[i]f I dwell at

some length on the tremors and gropings of that distant night, it is because I insist upon

proving that I am not, and never was, and never could have been a brutal scoundrel. The

gentle and dreary regions through which I crept were the patrimonies of poet—not

crime’s prowling ground” (Nabokov 149). These intrusions generally possess no

relation to the progressing action and offer no relevant information concerning the plot.

Their exclusive function is to distract the readers and alleviate the suspense and tension

of a particular passage.

The lengthy scene of seduction ends surprisingly briefly and without any climax.

The change of Humbert’s position from a guardian to a ‘lover’ is described in perfectly

placid words; the calming effect is again achieved by the use of intrusion: “Frigid

gentlewomen of the jury! I had thought that months, perhaps years, would elapse before

I dared to reveal myself to Dolores Haze; but by six she was wide awake, and by six

fifteen we were technically lovers. I am going to tell you something very strange: it was

she who seduced me” (Nabokov 149-50). Paradoxically enough, the narrator devotes

32

himself to complex and flowery description when talking about going to a men’s room

or when contemplating a fire hydrant. But when he finally achieves the sexual

intercourse he desires for many months, he suddenly evades all the lengthy poetic

descriptions and limits himself to a brief and rather curt announcement. He derives

readers’ attention by intrusions and omits crucial facts. These tactics and particularly the

intrusions enable him to shadow the facts and to prevent the readers from searching for

them..

Another strategic device used to distance the narrative from the real world

outside the novel and draw it closer to the world of art is the use of poetic and

metaphorical language. The narrator emphasizes the aesthetic and disparages the natural

and the sexual. Humbert implies that he views sexual matters as irrelevant. An example

of this attitude of Humbert’s is to be found in this passage: “[b]ut really, these are

irrelevant matters; I am not concerned with so called ‘sex’ at all. Anybody could

imagine those elements of animality. A greater endeavor lures me on: to fix once for all

the perilous magic of nymphets” (Nabokov 151). Humbert claims that the sexual

matters represent for him a second rate topic. Marcus comments on this strategy of the

narrator in this way: “[t]he fact that Humbert conceives of sexuality as an aspect of

existence subordinate to another, more basic element, which is aesthetic desire, helps

him embellish the nature of his sexual encounters with Dolores and blur the boundaries

between good and evil, high and low.” (191). It is beneath Humbert to discuss a topic

concerned with naturalness, or as he calls it, with animality. He occupies his mind in

higher, nobler thoughts. This attitude is evidently a mask. He does not discuss sexual

matters because such discussion would constitute an immense danger to his credibility.

According to Marcus, “[t]he remarkable aesthetic manner in which the narrating

character describes the sexual encounters he forced on Dolores contributes to the

33

rhetorical impact of his words” (190). Humbert avoids using openly sexual terms, he,

instead, blurs the descriptions of erotic scenes by metaphors and poetic language. He

rarely uses exact terms, he rather compose vague phrases, such as “the hidden tumor of

an unspeakable passion” (Nabokov 64), “my gagged, bursting beast” (65), “the ultimate

convulsion” (66), “the hot hollow of her groin” (67), or “a column of onyx” (152).

These phrases often prevent the readers from understanding what exactly happens or at

least from understanding the actual severity of Humbert’s deeds. For example the

content of a sentence “I crushed out against her left buttock the last throb of the longest

ecstasy man or monster had ever known” (Nabokov 67) could have been easily

conveyed on half the space by using straight but therefore also dangerously transparent

words.

Another example of how the meaning could be inverted when vague metaphoric

language is used is presented by Marcus:

[Humbert] does not use blunt sexual terms but terms borrowed from other

semantic fields that express sensuality. Thus his sperm is perceived as a

combination of basic and nutritious liquid—milk—with another liquid,

symbolizing festiveness and luxury—champagne—both liquids mingling

with the vital sweetness of honey. The conclusion proceeding from this

euphemistic idiom is that all Humbert did was to enrich Dolores’s hidden

world (probably the vagina, presented by a white purse) with a rich,

lustful, and nutritious food. (190-1)

Owing to the use of metaphors and euphemisms, Humbert succeeds in obscuring the

content. With the less attentive readers he may even manage to create a picture of a

completely reversed situation.

34

In every erotic scene, Humbert creates a verbal cipher and it is the task of the

readers to decode it. Or as Lokrantz expresses it, “[t]he reader must really be careful not

to be caught cat-napping in Nabokov’s game of felicitous catoptrics” (59). Humbert’s

metaphors cause that “the desiring subject and the desired object become merely artistic

representations” and thus “the moral significance of the abuser’s deeds is blurred or

even vanishes completely” (Marcus 191). He transforms Dolores from a living being

into a piece of art, a collection of flowery metaphors and as it is impossible to harm a

metaphor, Humbert suggests the readers that it is also impossible that he could be

harming Dolores. Marcus explains the same idea in these words: “Humbert conceives of

his relations with Dolores in aesthetic terms enable him to refer to his object of desire

not as a subject with feelings, thoughts, and wishes of her own but as a work of art”

(189), or as Green formulates it, “Humbert attempts to obscure the truth by hurrying the

literal in the metaphorical and by shrouding Lolita’s tears, unhappiness, and

victimization with an artistic façade” (54). The readers may attempt to penetrate this

façade and to detect how far (or close) the real story is from that presented to them by

Humbert, but only if they notice the verbal illusion the narrator creates for them.

Tammi believes that “Humbert will never prevail on the level of his real life, for

if his jurors have their way he will be condemned … but it is also suggested that where

N-agents fail with their concrete audience, they may still be more successful in reaching

the readerdom at large through the sheer artistry of the narration” (286). Some of

Humbert’s tactics in reaching his readerdom have been described in this chapter. He has

been found a master in foregrounding in all its forms and also in successfully distracting

readers’ attention by continual intrusions. Vires writes that “art cannot compensate for

crime, and…as soon as art makes its appearance we have to be extraordinarily careful to

detect ugliness behind a veil of beauty” (152). It is truth that the readers of Lolita

35

definitely have to be that careful. But it is also truth that “a criminal with literary gifts

has a better chance of evading a well deserved sentence than an unlettered one” (Vries

152). It may easily happen that Humbert would prevent his readers from seeing the

crime behind the artistic mist he creates thanks to his extensive verbal abilities.

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4. The Possibilities of the Narrator

4.1 The Power of the Storyteller

To read is not the same as to witness. When the recipients read, the message is

presented to them by someone who narrates. Thus it cannot be fully objective because it

is seen through the narrator’s eyes. Lubbock describes the process in these words: “[the

narrator] tells [the story] as he sees it, in the first place; the reader faces the story-teller

and listens, and the story may be told so vivaciously that the presence of the minstrel is

forgotten” (251). The story could be narrated so skillfully that the readers may forget

that there is a storyteller presenting the facts and they may easily consider the facts to be

objective. Lubbock stresses this when he writes that “more is needed [in the novel] than

the simple impression the reader might have formed for himself, had he been present

and using his eyes on the spot. It is a case for general account of many things; or it is a

case for a certain view of the facts, based on inner knowledge, to be presented to the

reader” (124). But inner knowledge could hardly be considered objective and the same

stands for the facts that are viewed through this inner knowledge.

The narrator may be not only subconsciously subjective, though this subjectivity

is not less real because it is not realized, he can also sift and distort the facts quite

willfully. He is the one who selects what is worth telling and what is irrelevant, the one

who chooses the words and willingly or not imprints his opinion on the events

described. What is more, according to Marcus, the narrator in Lolita is a very egotistic

one and “[his] egotism makes his story to a great extent monological (in the Bakhtian

sense), providing us with very little information about the words of others” (193). As

the readers “cannot see past [Humbert] to any ‘objective’ reality beyond [their] own

consciousness” (Hyde 116) he inevitably “aspires to the status of positive protagonist in

the novel precisely by virtue of his being [the narrator]” (Tammi 302), because he is the

37

one who chooses the words and it is not in his interest to make choices in any way

unfavourable to him as a protagonist.

An evidence of the narrator’s impact on his audience is the fact that they adopt

his own terminology. Humbert tittles Dolores Haze almost exclusively by the name he

invents for her – Lolita. Interestingly enough, one of the strongest critics of the book, its

content, and its narrator, Elizabeth Patnoe, calls Dolores Haze by the same name as her

oppressor. The example is to be found in an extract from Patnoe’s article: “Humbert’s

objectification of and disregard for Lolita is reflected even in how he addresses her and

refers to her: throughout most of the time of action and the time of narration, Humbert

calls her Lolita, while everyone else calls her by the name she prefers, Dolly” (Patnoe;

par. 52). Thomières explains this tendency: “Humbert the narrator seduces us, so much

so that we usually call his victim by the name he has chosen for her and imposed on

her” (165). Humbert must be an exceptionaly seductive narrator, when Patnoe does not

realize she is calling Dolores by the name he invents for her, not even at the very

moment she is actually describing the process of Humbert’s subjugation of Dolores by

the means of this newly naming her.

Another reason the readers might have to respect Humbert’s narrative as an

objective one is the fact that he knows more than they do. As Lubbock words it, “the

spokesman is there [in the story], in recognizable relation with his matter; no question

of his authority can arise” (252). This authority of Humbert’s can be illustrated on his

description of Jean Farlow: “[s]he was very tall, wore either slacks with sandals or

billowing skirts with ballet slippers, drank any strong liquor in any amount, had had two

miscarriages, wrote stories about animals, painted, as reader knows, lakescapes, was

already nursing the cancer that was to kill her at thirty-three, and was hopelessly

unattractive to me” (Nabokov 117). Humbert Humbert knows that Jean is going to die

38

of cancer; he even knows that she is already suffering from it, but the readers have had

no chance of perceiving this before they have been told by Humbert in the above quoted

passage. In this section Humbert Humbert manifests authority so striking that it makes

him seem to be omniscient and almost godlike. Thus the common reader has no other

choice than to respect him.

Humbert’s defensive strategy of listing several famous people characteristic for

their similarly uncommon sexual preferences is as well based and dependent on his

narratorial powers. As Thomières reveals, “[t]he only problem is that [Humbert] forgets

to add that Dante and Beatrice were virtually the same age and Dante never so much as

approached his beloved who remained totally unaware of his love. As for Laura, no one

knows how old she was” (166). Humbert has the power to select what to say and what

to hold back. Thus he can influence his readers by presenting them just the favourable

facts (that Dante and Petrarch had also preferred little girls) and quietly omitting the

unfavourable ones (that Dante was of similar age as these little girls) or any counter-

arguments (that we actually do not even know the exact facts concerning Petrarch’s

‘little girl’).

From the position of the narrator, Humbert also has the possibility to interpret

other characters by choosing words for the descriptions of their personalities and

actions. He for example often misrepresents the character of Charlotte Haze by using

satiric and rather severe language when describing her and her actions, such as in this

passage: “[m]y fair accuser stopped, swallowing her venom and her tears. Whatever

Humbert Humbert said—or attempted to say—is inessential. She went on” (Nabokov

107). Charlotte finds herself deceived and heart broken, she tries to save herself and her

daughter from her husband who suddenly turns out to be a malicious pedophile (at least

from her point of view). In this situation, by mentioning her ‘fairness’ and playing with

39

images of her power to poison, Humbert severely derogates the situation and ridicules a

rightfully indignant wife and mother.

Humbert uses similar technique few paragraphs later when he talks about one of

Charlotte’s letters that she has written after reading Humbert’s diary: “other fragments

seemed to point to Charlotte’s intention of fleeing with Lo to Parkington, or even back

to Pisky, lest the vulture snatch her precious lamb (Nabokov 111). Humbert deliberately

lightens Charlotte’s anger and fear by employing a humorous metaphor presenting

himself as a vulture, though the situation from the point of view of the Haze family is

anything but humorous. By constantly ridiculing Charlotte, he succeeds in turning her

into a rather comical and pathetic character with whom the readers could hardly identify

or sympathize, similarly as with the fictional prefacer John Ray Jr. discussed in the

second chapter. Green comprises this idea as well, when she writes that:

Readers can assume that Charlotte wished to protect both herself and

her daughter from Humbert after finding his diary, discovering his true

intentions, and confronting him as she exclaims, ‘You’re a monster.

You’re detestable, abominable, criminal fraud. If you come near—I’ll

scream out the window’ (96). Yet, because of Humbert’s biased

portrayal, we catch only sidelong glimpses of woman with moral

principles. Lolita is cast by Humbert as the fairy princess, …

abandoned in the wilderness (Camp Q) by her jealous and wicked

mother.(47-8)

By erasing from the story any traces of the protecting mother and retaining just a silly

woman, Humbert has far better chances in neutralizing the severity of his conduct

concerning the minor daughter and thus also more surely securing the sympathies of his

audience.

40

The narrator not only has the power to degrade other characters, but also to

promote himself in the eyes of the readers. To do so, he devotes himself in anxious and

over sentimental elegies when losing the sight of Dolores for just a few moments:

Lo! Lola! Lolita! I hear myself crying from the doorway into the sun,

with the acoustics of time, domed time, endowing my call and its tell-tale

hoarseness with such a wealth of anxiety, passion and pain that really it

would have been instrumental in wrenching open the zipper of her nylon

shroud had she been dead. Lolita! In the middle of a trim turfed terrace I

found her at last – she had run out before I was ready. (Nabokov 269)

Dolores does not wait for her guardian to change into his swimming costume and she

decides to meet him directly at the pool. When Humbert does not find her at the hotel

room, he starts to envision her dead or fled and his anxiety is unappeasable. At this

trifling situation, there is no narratorial figure to ridicule Humbert as there is when

Charlotte fears her and her daughter’s safety. On the contrary, Humbert elaborately

describes his painful fears for Dolores and nobody disrupts or caricatures his feelings,

be their cause as trivial as it is.

Humbert Humbert disposes of crucial capacity to distort the story also in the

passage devoted to his stay in the Enchanted Hunters hotel. Patnoe points out that

He claims to leave out details because they are “irrelevant matters”, but he

erases them because they are, indeed, quite relevant. Since he wants to

acquit himself of the accusation of rape, wants to convince us that in this

scene Lolita seduces him to intercourse, he must narrate in gaps, must not

tell us who initiated certain acts, must use elusive language, must be self-

protectively discreet. (par. 43)

41

Patnoe highlights the narrator’s capacity to protect himself and his reputation in the

eyes of his readers by the selection of what he would and what he would not

incorporate into the narrative and by the possibility to choose the words by which he

will describe the selected4.

Some examples of Hubmert’s leaving out of details whose importance or

unimportance could therefore hardly be judged are as follows: “[h]owever, I shall not

bore my learned readers with a detailed account of Lolita’s presumptions” (Nabokov

151). Instead of providing information, Humbert provides his readers with a

compliment. Moreover, he very often bore his readers with his own presumptions and

does nowise mind it. By not offering this opportunity to another character as well he

proves that he really is the egotistic narrator Marcus considers him to be.

When the omission of a description of a situation is unsuitable due to possible

incoherence or suspiciousness, Humbert still has the possibility of being vague. This

vagueness distorts excessively the depiction of the first sexual intercourse, which

occurred in the Enchanted Hunters hotel. As Patnoe correctly points out “he never

absolutely defines the stark act so central to the scene” (Patnoe; par. 33) and it remains

on the readers’ judgment to decide what Dolores actually talks about. This is an

immensely hard task to accomplish as all the information the readers are given have

passed through the subjectivity sieve of the narrator, who may have a very good reason,

as he is a participant in the event, to modify the character of the incident.

The considerable impact of Humbert’s narratorial strategies has an excessive

influence on the impression that the other characters of the novel leave on the readers.

This concerns principally Humbert’s travel partner, Dolores Haze. When he is not

discussing himself, Humbert’s writing is usually directed on Dolores and thus he exerts

4 Humbert’s capacities in foregrounding and poeticity have already been discussed above.

42

the greatest influence just over this character and the impression she leaves. That is why

an independent subchapter is devoted solely to Humbert’s possibilities to interpret

Dolores Haze and the situations concerning her.

4.2 Interpreting Dolores

Humbert Humbert, the narrator of Lolita, tries to explain his readers and fictional

jurors that he is less guilty than it may seem from the bare facts. Although he admits

doing what he has done, he also points out, that the minor girl concerned is not

completely innocent, that she is not just a victim, but rather an accomplice. Otherwise

she would not wish him to kiss her and she would not initiate any sexual activities. The

problem is that Humbert speaks all the time, that Humbert presents all the facts, and, as

Thomières observes “[Dolores] does not really have anything to say in the book, apart

from a very few passages in direct speech, including one when she cries out ‘Oh no, not

again’ (p. 192). We are exposed throughout to the narrator’s point of view” (165).

Humbert does not let the character of Dolores speak. He does not even let her talk

through the narrator very often. And when he does so, he carefully selects what he will

mention and what he will rather leave out.

The question that arises is whether the readers should not accept Humbert’s

words concerning Dolores with increased vigilance. The reason is, as Patnoe points out,

that “[o]ne of the primary debates about Lolita is whether we can believe Humbert’s

claims about Lolita” (par. 26). Humbert himself occasionally acknowledges his lack of

understanding of Dolores’ character and wishes: “it struck me … that I simply did not

know a thing about my darling’s mind” (Nabokov 324). This fact is further supported

by Patnoe’s argument concerning Humbert’s habit of calling the girl by different name

than the rest of the world: “Humbert’s objectification of and disregard for Lolita is

reflected even in how he addresses her and refers to her: throughout most of the time of

43

action and the time of narration, Humbert calls her Lolita, while everyone else calls her

by the name she prefers, Dolly” (par. 52). It definitely stands out to be a sign of

disrespect for Dolly’s wishes, which must be considered a substantial deficiency in the

interpreter of Dolly’s character, thoughts, and action.

Humbert also has the possibility to misinterpret everything he benignly lets

Dolores say in his story. He could introduce Dolly’s words by an ironical sentence or

omit it, where it would be necessary for good understanding of Dolores’ words. He can

also lift a part of Dolores’ speech out of context and thus change its meaning. This is

probably done in this passage: “[w]ell, the Miranda twins had shared bed for years, and

Donald Scott, who was the dumbest boy in the school, had done it with Hazel Smith in

his uncle’s garage, and Kenneth Knight—who was the brightest—used to exhibit

himself wherever and whenever he had a chance, and—” (Nabokov 154) by stating

matter-of-factly what Dolores tells him as a piece of gossip, he may create in his readers

the image of a spoilt generation, Dolores notwithstanding.

The above mentioned case is rather unsubstantial and cannot change the readers’

opinion on Dolores profoundly. However, Humbert has more and better opportunities to

execute his interpretative powers, as is for example illustrated by this excerpt: “[a]s she

was in the act of getting back into the car, an expression of pain flitted across Lo’s face.

It flitted again, more meaningfully, as she settled down beside me. No doubt, she

reproduced it the second time for my benefit” (Nabokov 158). By stating this, the

narrator produces a deep insult on Dolores. He accuses her of a purposeful lie, although

the only motive for his assumption is the expression on Dolores’ face, in other words,

nothing objective. On the contrary, there is a lot of evidence against Humbert’s

accusation that is of much more objective character. Dolores expresses the pain just

after an “adult had had strenuous intercourse [with her] three times that very morning”

44

(Nabokov 158), and claims that Humbert “torn something inside her” (Nabokov 159).

Although Humbert himself admits, when describing the morning intercourse, that there

were “discrepancies between kid’s life and mine” (Nabokov 151), he still does not

believe Dolores’ expressions of pain, considers them a lie enacted for him and insults

Dolores by interpreting them in this way in the narrative. By doing so, he diminishes her

pain in the eyes of the readers and conceals his role in causing them. On top of that, he

even succeeds in creating less favourable image of Dolores, and thus also a more

favourable image of himself.

A similar example is introduced by Marcus: “[t]he narrating character mentions

Dolores’s awful sobs at the end of a list of things ordinarily taken to a journey, such as

maps, tour books and old tires (127), as if trying to make light of the suffering he caused

by marginalizing it and equating it with trivial matters” (193). Marcus refers to this

passage in Nabokov’s novel: “a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old

tiers, and her sobs in the night” (199). Another occurrence of the strategy of

marginalizing Dolores’ pain is presented by Green: “Humbert buys Lolita ‘four books

of comics, a box of candy, a box of sanitary pads, two cokes, [and] a manicure set’”:

“by concealing Lolita’s pain in lengthy list of gifts, Humbert diverts our attention from

her physical and emotional suffering to his own generosity” (18). These examples of the

narrator’s interpretations of facts concerned with Dolores illustrate his power to

influence the meaning of otherwise for him rather harmful words. By providing the

problematic information with context that could substantially change their impact on the

readers, he transforms from the one who causes pain to the one who is generous and

indulging.

It was already mentioned, that Humbert rarely lets Dolores speak. When he does

so, he carefully selects the words he let her say in the narrative. Marcus remarks that

45

“[i]t sometimes seems that even in the few instances when Humbert quotes Dolores, he

does so primarily to prove his claim concerning her petty and vulgar nature and thus

diminish the reader’s feeling of empathy towards her” (193). In other words, the

narrator does not quote her to do her justice; he does so to denigrate her image in the

eyes of his readers. An example of this strategical use of quotation of Dolores is to be

found in part of the novel when the travelers pass a car accident and see a dead woman,

whose shoes Dolores comments in these words: “[t]hat was the exact type of moccasin I

was trying to describe to that jerk in the store” (Nabokov 197). Dolly’s proclamation

sounds rather crude, especially when lifted out of context and deprived of any

explaining introduction. The sole function of this citation is to illustrate Dolores’

disagreeable nature.

The powers of the narrator as the “wielder of words” are also stressed by Green:

“as Humbert is such an impressive wielder of words, the damage Lolita suffers in his

hands often is shrouded in poetic language or turned against her, thereby forming and

reiterating the false impression of Lolita as a brat, a conventional and unintelligent

American child, and Humbert as a suffering exploited adult” (17). Humbert never omits

to mention Dolores’ intrusive behavior; he is very critical and judges her severely. He

ascribes nothing to her problematic age; everything is her fault and her personal

deficiency. There are some examples of Humbert’s judgments of Dollores’ nature and

behavior: “Lolita, when she chose, could be a most exasperating brat. I was not really

quite prepared for her fits of disorganized boredom, intense and vehement griping, her

sprawling, droopy, dopey-eyed style…Mentally, I found her to be a disgustingly

conventional little girl” (Nabokov 166). Interestingly enough, the only blameful

character in this excerpt is Humbert, as he has not been prepared to encounter the

typically teenage behavior in a teenager.

46

Humbert always gladly points to Dolores’ primitiveness and vulgarity: “[s]he it

was to whom adds were dedicated: the ideal consumer, the subject and object of every

foul poster” (Nabokov 167). He specifically highlights the behavior that is typical to

most teenagers, that is to be strongly influenced by popular culture and advertisement.

But to his readers, he presents it as Dolores’ personal fault, not as a characteristic of her

age. He also insults her in a simpler manner, by just stating that she is not clever “[Lo]

was not as intelligent a child as her I.Q. might suggest” (Nabokov 170). And all the

time, Dolores is quiet; she is not let to say anything in her defense.

Another example of Humbert’s ridicule of Dolores is present in the passage

where he makes a list of all the places where they have quarreled:

At a motel called Poplar Shade in Utah, where six pubescent trees were

scarcely taller than my Lolita, and where she asked, à props de rien,

how long did I think we were going to live in stuffy cabins, doing filthy

things together and never behaving like ordinary people? On N.

Broadway, Burns, Oregon, corner of W. Washington, facing Safeway, a

grocery. In some little town in Sun Valley of Idaho, before a brick hotel,

pale and flushed bricks nicely mixed, with, opposite, a poplar playing its

liquid shadows all over the local Honor Roll. In a sage brush wilderness,

between Pinedale and Farson. Somewhere in Nebraska, on Main Street,

near the First National Bank, established 1889, with a view of railway

crossing in the vista of the street, and beyond that the white organ pipes

of a multiple silo. And on McEwen St., corner of Wheaton Ave., in a

Michigan town bearing his first name. (Nabokov 178-9)

Humbert lists the places as if making a shopping list. He does not mention almost any

particulars concerning the reasons or courses of the disagreements but devotes a lot of

47

place to description of the localities. Thus he undermines the importance the disputes

must have bore for Dolores. By making trivial what for Dolores is important to that

extent that she would quarrel for it, Humbert makes also Dolores trivial in the eyes of

the readership.

Many similarly degrading sentences are uttered at Dolores’ expense. She is

ridiculed and criticized, she is called Humbert’s “pet” (Nabokov 158) and the readers

see it and get a rather unflattering picture of her character. On the contrary, there is no

one to ridicule and criticize Humbert. As Dolores’ simulacrum deteriorates, that of

Humbert simultaneously ameliorates.

Another strategy of diminishing readers’ possible sympathies for Dolores and of

derogating her pain is that of making her less human. At times, Humbert tries to

persuade his readers that Dolores is not a girl child, but a mythical nymphet who posses

magical powers over him and other nympholepts. Occasionally, when talking about

Dolores, he calls her a nymphet and ascribes her qualities typical for of these creatures:

“‘Bah!’ Said the cynical nymphet” (Nabokov 126), or “the most mythopoeic nymphet in

October’s orchard haze” (Nabokov 211). Green describes the strategy in these words:

“Humbert categorizes Lolita as a ‘nymphet’: a ‘little deadly demon’ with ‘fantastic

power’ (17). By assigning to Lolita that which is otherworldly and demonic, Humbert

thereby strips her of her humanity and childhood and attempts to make his pedophilia

more morally and socially acceptable” (13). It would be easy and natural to pity a child

who, willingly or not, has an intercourse with a fifty year old man. But the readers

might be quite confused when a mythical nymphet appears in the novel to have the

intercourse with a fifty year old man.

Humbert’s possibility of interpreting Dolores and every action connected with

her is essential to the passages devoted to their first sexual intercourse at the Enchanted

48

Hunters hotel. The important role in this part of the novel is again played by vagueness

and ambiguousness. Examples of both are to be found in this excerpt:

[T]he odd sense of living in a brand new, mad new dream world, where

everything was permissible, came over me as I realized what she was

suggesting. I answered I did not know what game she and Charlie had

played. ‘you mean you had never--?’ –her features twisted into state of

disgusted incredulity. ‘You have never—’ she started again … ‘You

mean you never did it when you were a kid?’ ‘Never,’ I answered quite

truthfully. ‘Okay,’ said Lolita, ‘here is where we start.’ (Nabokov 150-1)

On the basis of this conversation with Dolores, Humbert concludes that Dolores wants

to have sexual intercourse with him. Patnoe’s comments on his conclusion in this way:

“[f]or me, game evokes various pre-teen kissing games—or, at the very most, some

kind of fondling activity. Again, Humbert strategically does not specify what Lolita

says” (par. 36). What Dolores exactly means is unclear, it is Humbert, who infers that

she has intercourse on her mind, but Dolores does not specifically say so.

Humbert’s account of events cannot be than a subjective one, as no objective or

definite word emerges in the whole passage. “The stark act”, “it” and “game” can all

mean either sexual intercourse or anything else. It depends on interpretation, context,

and situation. The same applies for the sentence: “[a]s if to see whether I had my fill

and learned the lesson, she drew away and surveyed me” (Nabokov 150). Humbert

considers Dolores’ drawing away for a sign of “seeing whether he learned his lesson”,

Patnoe understands this drawing away differently: “[w]e … cannot be sure of

Humbert’s interpretation of Lolita’s look and of why she moves away from him. Could

she draw—or pull—away from Humbert in surprise? Could her flush be of fear?” (par.

34). Humbert’s self-confident interpretation of the situation and of Dolores’ wishes

49

raises many questions and doubts. Patnoe claims that “[Humbert] manipulates the voice

and the dialogue of this passage in his effort to convince us that he is seduced” (par.

33). He definitely does so to seduce his readers.

50

5. Conclusion

This thesis describes some of the narratorial strategies that enable the protagonist

of Lolita to introduce a substantial portion of uncertainty and ambiguity into the

narrative. It examines the role of Humbert Humbert’s intellectual superiority, his

proficiency in foreign languages, his capacities in foregrounding form over the content,

the powers he has at his disposal thanks to his position of a narrator and interpreter, and

some others. It tries to explain how is it possible that there are so vastly different

opinions concerning the plot of the novel not only among the usual readers but also

among the academics. What is not the purpose of this thesis is to moralize, or judge the

characters of the novel, as they are fictional, unreal, and thus beyond moral judgment.

This thesis does not support any of the two antagonistic opinions. It is not its aim

to point to the culprit, as there is none, because the novel is just a piece of fiction. The

readers could notice all the verbal twists and narratorial intrigues and enjoy the

complexity and craftiness of the remarkable book immensely, or they could overlook it

completely and let the narrator to lead them through the novel which thus becomes

much simpler. But it is by no means a question of morality, just that of literature. The

readers may register instances of what would in real world be considered bad or

immoral, but they are not in the real world, and it would therefore be nonsensical to

judge the unreal by the same criteria as the real. And this thesis does not incite them to

do so.

Bruno Zerwek writes that:

[T]he figure of unreliable narrator can itself be exposed as a major

instance of metafictional literary game being played in (or rather by)

Lolita. Readers who naturalize problematic elements in Lolita on the

basis of such literary frames will not apply Jacobi’s perspectival

51

principle but the functional principle of naturalization: they do not

resolve the ambiguities by judging the narrator Humbert unreliable but

by assuming that the aim behind the creation of such a prototypical and

metafictionally exposed unreliable narrator is itself a metafictional

game. (165)

In short, Lolita is just a book and the game the narrator plays on his readers and with his

readers is just a game, not a sin, not a crime, a game, and nothing more than that. It is

up to us – the readers, whether we will follow this game and try to see through it, or

not. This thesis maps some of the highly interesting and tricky strategies the narrator

uses in his game, but it definitely does not accuse or judge any character, because it is

quite aware of the fact that it deals only and solely with characters of fiction, and not

with people.

52

Appendix

Hardly understandable and very specialized words: addendum (141),

inundated sidewalk (119), umbra (9), receptacle (29), diaphanous (30), pugilist (31),

erudite (32), ennui (33), crenulated (42), nacreous (46), ullulations (58), pederosis (61),

iliac crests (72), palpitating (73), duenna (93), loquacious (158), saturnalia (156), primal

sonorities (163), concours (168) = cohabitation, coevals (168), to know her carnally

(169), gasoline paraphernalia (172), areolas (187), manatee (189), bi-iliac (199),

mythopoeic (211), nincompoop (211), forsythia (226), a young woman far gone in the

family way (242), cryptochomism (258), zigzagging zanies (272), poliomyelitis (258),

overdeveloped gluteal parts (274), logodaedaly and logomancy (284), undinist (284),

pederosis (293), Proustianized and Procrusteanized (301), pointillistic (313), pleasant

diaphragmal melting (349).

French: frétillement, Cent, Tant pis, petit cadeau, bidet, dix-huit (21), mes

malheurs, françeais moyen (25), à la gamine, mairie (26), pot-au-feu, mon oncle

d’Amerique (27), Mais qui est-ce? (28), j’aidemannde pardonne ... est-ce que je puis, le

gredin (30), fruit vert, Au fond, ça m’est bien égal (42), en escalier (43), je m’imagine

cela (46), à mes heures (47), le mot juste (50), la vermeillette fente, un petit mont feutré

de mousse délicate, tracé sur le milieu d’un fillet escarlatte (51), Ces matins gris si doux

(53), Mais allez-y, allez-y! (58), au Grand Pied, mais rien (72), peine forte et dure (77),

arrière-pensée (87), c’est moi qui décide (93), Ce qui me rend folle, c’est que je ne sais

à quoi tu pense quand tu es comme ça (100), Eh bien, pas de tout! (118), aux yeux

battus (125), C’est bien tout? (129), nous connûmes (163), soi-disant (165), c’est tout

(170), comme vous le savez trop bien, ma gentille (168), ce qu’on appelle (173), partie

de plaisir (174), raison d’être (174), comme on dit (176), à propos de rien (178), face à

claques (179), coulant en regard (180), tic nerveux (181), mais je divague (182), les

53

eyeux perdue (182), se tordre (182), ange gauche (183), hors concours (188), cabanes

(190), que dis-je (190), un monsieur très bien (192), dans la force de l’âge (197),

vieillard encore vert (197), casé (197), rentier (198), recuillement (200), mes goûts

(204), toiles (206), Prenez donc une de ces poires. La bone dame d’en face m’en offre

plus que je n’en peux savourer (206), Mississe Taille Lorevient de me donner ces

dahliasm belles fleurs que j’exècre (206), Et tous vos fillettes, elles vont bien? (207),

sale histoire (207), émigré (222), mon pauvre ami, je ne vous ai jamais revu et quoiqu’il

y ait bien peu de chance que vous voyiez mon livre, permettez-moi de vous dire que je

vous serre la main bien cordialement, et que toutes mes fillettes vous saluent (230), d’un

petit air faussement contrit (230), [t]endresse (231), pommettes (232), maman (232), j’ai

toujour admiré l’œuvre ormonde du sublime Dublinois (235), c’est entendu (235),

[e]ntendu (235), qui prenait son temps (235), le montagnard émigré (238), verdure

(242), adolori d’amoureuse languer (243), Gros (244), donc (246), à titre docementaire

(253), un ricanement (255), la pomme de sa canne (257), petit rat (262), soyons logiqes

(271), Etats Unis (272), haute montagne (274), que sais-je! (274), chassé-croisé (276),

Je crois que c’était un ... billet doux ... Bonjour, mon petit (276), Est-ce que tu ne

m’aimes plus, ma Carmen? (277), une belle dame tout en bleu (278), comme il faut

(282), touché (285), Dolorès Disparu (288), Chambres garnies (289), que c’était loin,

tout cela! (289), Et moi qui t’offrai mon génie (290), L’autre soir un air froid d’opéra

m’alita: / Son félé—bien fol et qui s’y fie! / Il neige, le décor s’écroule, Lolita! / Lolita,

qu’ai-je fait de ta vie? (292), ensellure (293), cavalier servant (294), travaux (296), très

digne (297), souvenir, souvenir que me veux-tu? (297), petite nymphe accroupie (298),

vin triste (299)Mes fenêtres! (300), Savez-voux qu’à dis ans ma petite était folle de

vous? (301), Pas tout à fait (304), Personne. Je resonne. Repersonne. (307), pommettes

(307), frileux (311), souffler (316), mon grand pêché radieux (317), Chngeons de vie,

54

ma Carmen, alons vivre quelque part où nous ne serons jamais séparès (317), Carmen,

voulez-vous venir avec moi? (317), trousseau (319), mon petit cadeau (318),

Carmentcita, lui demandais-je (319), mais je t’aimais, je t’aimais! (324), mille grâces

(330), vient de (330), Réveillez-vous, Laqueue, il est temps de mourir! (331), Je suis

Monsieur Brustère (336).

Latin: Delectatio morosa (46), pavor nocturnus (77), gluteal sulcus (121), Seva

ascendes, pulsata, brulans, kitzelans, dementissima. Elevator clatterans, pausa,

clatterans, populus in corridoro. Hanc nisi mors mihi adiment nemo! Juncea puellula, jo

pensavo fondissime, nobserva nihil quidquam (136), venus febriculosa (225), intacta

(256), minutiae (243), flatus (250), O lente currite noctis equi! (249), finis (306).

55

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