Loving Lolita
Patrick Mooney
December 13, 2000
English 180N
Throughout the majority of Lolita, Nabokov constructs Humbert as a "nympholept," an adult male who has a preference for a certain type of pre- or early adolescent female. It is this particular preference that first draws Lolita’s narrator to the young Delores Haze. Humbert’s feelings for the title-subject, however, have undergone a shift by the end of the novel — and after the amount of narrative space devoted to Humbert’s experience of nympholeptcy, the depiction of a Humbert enamoured of an adult Delores is startling. Ultimately, there as been a shift in the basis of Humbert’s feelings for Lolita; and it is this shift in the base that allows Humbert’s feelings to remain the same on the surface. This change can best be accounted for in psychological terms: Humbert’s desire is, in general, enhanced by the constant postponement of satisfaction.
In general, Humbert’s sexual preference is for "nymphets" — a specific subset of prepubescent and early pubescent girls who are, according to Humbert, "demonic" (rather than human) in nature (Nabokov 16). Humbert distinguishes between "nymphets" and normal women to such a large degree that he calls them members of different genders (18). "Nymphets" are indistinguishable from normal female girls to the average heterosexual male, to other girls of their own age, and even to themselves; Humbert remarks that a nymphet can "[stand] unrecognized by [other girls her age] and unconscious herself of her fantastic power." In fact, "nymphets" are distinguishable only by a man who has an affinity for them, a "nympholept," a creature described by Humbert as "an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy with a bubble of hot poison in [his] loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in [his] subtle spine" (17). That is, a man capable of recognizing and responding to nymphets must be creative and driven, psychologically unbalanced, and perversely sensual.
Without question, Humbert meets all of these criteria that he has outlined. Moreover, his desire for Lolita is (at first) made possible and (later) transcends the limits imposed by these characteristics. That Humbert is driven is demonstrated by the degree to which his life centers on his psychological disorder of "pederosis," as he also terms the experience of nympholeptcy (55). The extent to which his life revolves around his nympholeptcy can be seen from his experiences of his marriage: His first marriage is "for my own safety," to disguise the nature of his sexual orientation from others (24); his marriage to Charlotte Haze, more to the point, is intended to allow him to be near her daughter (70). That Humbert is creative in his nympholeptcy is apparent from the surprisingly plausible spin that he puts on the journal entries that cause Charlotte’s attempt to leave him. (96) That Humbert is perversely sensual can be seen in the quality his narration throughout the story: This text is playful, creative, and funny in very specific ways not directly related to the story’s advancement, but rather related to a spontaneous textual jouissance (283). For instance, Humbert recalls the forgotten name of a taxi driver, writing in an aside that his name "taxies back to me" (32).
Perhaps more to the point, this textual sensuality extends to Humbert’s description of his sexual experience, from which (he claims) he derives pleasure to a greater degree than most normal heterosexuals are capable of achieving. (Humbert carefully distinguishes his nympholeptic sensuality from the standard heterosexual experience, of which he is also capable. For instance, on page 18, he points out that he believes he derives normal physical pleasure in the manner of "normal big males consorting with their normal big mates" in his sexual experience with these "normal big mates"; his passion is still for nymphets, however.) The degree to which he sensually revels even in the mere aesthetic appreciation of nymphets can be seen, for instance, in his erotic obsession with the accidental details of Lolita’s actions immediately before his clandestine masturbatory experience of her. (He says, to take just one instance, that watching Lolita bite into an apple made him feel that "my heart was like snow under thin crimson skin") (58).
That Humbert is psychologically unbalanced is suggested not only by his nympholeptcy itself, but also by his occasional offhand reference to time spent in mental institutions (e.g., "soon after my return to civilization I had another bout with insanity") (34). This is the most interesting aspect of the underlying character traits that make nympholeptcy possible for Humbert, because this underlying aspect of what makes Humbert a nympholept is also what allows him to remain romantically bound to Lolita even beyond the period of her nymphancy.
Humbert’s normal experience of sexual desire is that desire is enhanced and made more satisfying by a separation from its object. Both of his early near-consummations of his desire for Annabel are interrupted (once by random passers-by, once by the voice of Annabel’s mother, who is searching for her daughter). This becomes a model for his later experiences of sexual pleasure and satisfaction. Humbert’s journal exhibits ample evidence for this model of sexual satisfaction. He describes his experience of watching her at a pool on a Sunday, for instance, when her image affects the "thousand eyes wide open in my eyed blood," and says that even his "perception of her, if concentrated upon, might be sufficient to have me attain a beggar’s bliss immediately" (42). Noteworthy here is the extravagant language Humbert uses to describe the erotic titillation achieved merely by observing aspects of Lolita’s physical appearance.
Overall, Humbert’s journal demonstrates an inverse relationship: Greater violence of psychological reaction occurs in response to lesser real involvement on Lolita’s part in experiences that are sexually and/or emotionally gratifying. The most extreme example is the psychological experience he describes when he finds the list of students in Lolita’s class at the Ramsdale School. Humbert describes this imaginative romantic experience, which does not require her physical presence at all, in stylized classical terms. In this case, Humbert constructs a fantasy featuring Lolita as the center of a mythological world, using the archaic word "forsooth" and imagining her "a fairy princess between her two maids of honor." The next day, he writes in his journal that he "[longs] for some terrific disaster. Earthquake. Spectacular explosion," which (in his fantasy) allows him to sexually enjoy Lolita in a completely unrestrained manner. The same night he has a dream charged with sexual symbolism suggesting that he fantasizes about deflowering her (52-4). This elaborate psychological reaction is substantially more intense than the psychological reaction he has after masturbating in her presence: This latter experience of her involves no mythological language; moreover, it produces no reaction more severe than physical satisfaction and a desire for lunch (59, 62).
It is this radical separation between Humbert and his object of desire that makes Lolita such a desirable object for fantasy in the first place. By implication, then, Humbert’s sexual satisfaction is enhanced by the difficulty of achieving the sexual experience in the first place. Contrasting examples can be seen in Humbert’s experiences with prostitutes and his opportunites with other adult women; he says that only one of the "eighty or so grues I had had operate on me" managed to give him a "pang of genuine pleasure" (22). He also mentions that he "could obtain with a snap of [his] fingers any adult female [he] chose"; he then describes the steps his lack of interest leads him to takes to ensure that adult women do not "come toppling, bloodripe, into [his] cold lap" (25). It seems, then, that the desire he experiences is enhanced by difficulty of sexual access. It also seems that the degree of his sexual satisfaction once this gap of sexual accessibility has been bridged seems to depend on how wide that gap originally was. (That Humbert derives his satisfaction from a union, of identity as well as of flesh, with the object of his desire is apparent from the language he uses to discuss his sexual satisfaction and the possibility of being satisfied. After his masturbatory experience, he describes Lolita as "safely solipsized"; and he says that only possibility of his satisfaction with Annabel could occur only "by [their] actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other’s soul and flesh.") (60, 12)
This phenomenon of Humbertian lust, in which sexual desire is enhanced by separation from its object, causes Humbert to see Lolita as radically separate from him and capable of satisfying him only if that fundamental separation is obliterated. This, of course, is what Humbert expects will happen when he finally has intercourse with Lolita. He relates to her as if she were merely a device allowing him a newfound opportunity "to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets" (134).
Humbert’s description of the guilt he feels over his desire for Lolita merely reinforces this point. Although it seems he attempts to feel some sympathy for her situation as a victim of abuse, and although he attempts to engage in both in person-to-person and father-to-daughter relationships with her, both types of attempts fail miserably. In fact, these attempts at normalcy are merely decorations on the surface of their relationship, designed to prevent the ignorant community from learning the truth: Humbert’s relationship with his stepdaughter is, at its base, sexually exploitative. The half-hearted nature of the attempts demonstrates that Humbert himself is aware of this on some level. Humbert’s feelings of guilt the morning after he and Lolita first have intercourse demonstrates that the sexual aspect of their relationship is fundamental:
At the bottom of that dark turmoil [i.e., concern over the recent change in his relationship to Delores] I felt the writhing of desire again, so monstrous was my appetite for that miserable nymphet. Mingled with the pangs of guilt was the thought that her mood might prevent me from making love to her again as soon as I found a nice country road where to park in peace. (140)
Without question, Humbert’s "dark turmoil" is also the low point of presence of Delores Haze in the novel as an independent subject. Her solipsization by Humbert is nearly complete; he seems to have made her completely into an instrument of his sexual pleasure, obscuring her subjectivity by making her the representative of the type "nymphet." At this point in the novel, Humbert has complete freedom in how he relates to her because of the absence of any other individual who might check him. To himself (and the reader), Humbert defends his relationship to Lolita by constructing her as complicit in it -- there is a repeated implication that Lolita consciously leads him on. The language in Humbert’s own descriptions of her demonstrate this: at least two words that he attaches to her in the first few weeks after he meets her ("meretricious," "moll") connote prostitution (41, 62). He also describes her as winking at him, for instance, and as "impudent" (43, 58). All of these statements, subtly arranged by Humbert, build a suggestion that Lolita is aware of the effects of her actions on him and that she consciously behaves as she does in order to provoke sexual desire in him.
The second part of the novel can be read as the story of Delores as she re-inscribes herself as a subject. Delores responds to Humbert’s efforts at solipsization by progressively asserting her individuality throughout this part of the novel: Humbert increasingly finds himself unable to obscure her individuality and re-construct her as the ideal object of his desire.
At the beginning of their sexual relationship, this refusal to be solipsized takes relatively inconsequential forms. For instance, Humbert notes that he "could persuade her to do many things," but that she absolutely refused to "fritter away her ‘vacation’ on [...] highbrow reading matter" (173). Delores’s self-assertion gradually becomes a more dominant aspect of their relationship: she begins to exchange sexual satisfaction for Humbert for increases in allowance and permission to engage in previously forbidden activities, such as parties (185-6). As part two of the novel progresses, Delores asserts herself more: She begins to threaten Humbert not only with deprivation of sexual favors, but also with deprivation of her presence. This first occurs explicitly when she disappears from the house after a fight, then persuades Humbert to agree to take another long car trip like the trip they took together after Delores’s mother died. This time, however, Delores insists on control over the destination and route of the trip (206-7). This role-reversal is a direct manifestation of her self-assertion in her relationship with Humbert. Moreover, the progressive re-inscription of Delores as subject is threatening to Humbert: The possibility of choice for Delores is the possibility of rejection for him; this possibility that she will deny him herself is (once again) a postponement of complete solipsization, a necessary prerequisite for continuing desire for Humbert. Ultimately, Delores effects the realization of her strongest threats by disappearing from Humbert after persuading him to drive her to a rendezvous with another man; she rejects him again at the end of the work for someone else.
It is this progressive self-assertion by Delores that allows her to be loved by Humbert "more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else," even when she has transitioned out of her period of nympholeptcy, become an adult woman, and is "only the faint violet whiff and dead leaf echo of the nymphet [he] had rolled himself upon with such cries in the past" (277). Delores/Lolita, in asserting her existence as more than an object for the satisfaction of Humbert Humbert, creates herself romantically in the manner that she existed sexually for him when he first met her: as unavailable. This denial of romantic availability through progressive self-assertion makes her romantically attractive to Humbert in the same way that she was sexually attractive to him earlier -- as an object fundamentally separate from him and, potentially, the most satisfying possible subject for solipsization. Unlike her sexual unavailability, however, this romantic unavailability never flip-flops in such a manner as to satisfy Humbert’s craving, and so Lolita can remain an object beloved by Humbert as long as they both live -- even after her period of nymphancy has ended. (Noteworthy at this point is that Humbert’s general preference is still for nymphets, despite his romantic interest in an adult woman -- on page 268, he describes two attractive young girls he notices while trying to find the home Lolita shares with her husband.)
It is difficult to assess whether this shift -- from Humbert’s experience of Lolita as an object to his experience of her as an independently existing subject -- atones, to any degree, for his attempt to erase that subjectivity. Any such evaluation would rest, at bottom, on a fundamental faith that (for instance) a rational animal is endowed by its creator with certain inalienable rights, and that this is a truth which is self-evident; or that one should obey the principle that each member of society is ethically obligated to act in exactly the manner that he or she would want every other member of that society to act in the same situation. Abstractions and leaps of faith such as these seem inappropriate in the face of the cynical atheist modernism of Humbert Humbert. Moreover, his repetitive assertions that he has been swept away by his passion and led on by a girl in early puberty, combined with the novel’s refusal to provide any viewpoint more objective than his, further problematizes questions on this topic. How does one assign blame for activities committed under the influence of love, passion, and/or desire? Moreover, how can realistic ethical evaluations be made about a situation that was kept hidden, when both people involved are deceased, and when the person reporting the facts of the case both has a history of mental illness and strong motives for distortion?
However, a tentative answer can be sketched out, based on Humbert’s evaluation of his own actions. Humbert’s own evaluation of his conduct toward Delores is surprisingly clear, after the equivocations and attempts to shift the blame onto Delores that occur throughout most of the story. Humbert’s own evaluation of his actions is as absolute and final as Ivan Karamazov’s moral pronouncement on the existence of the suffering of children: Fundamentally, it is unforgivable. Humbert’s claims that "life is a joke" if "it can be proven to [him]--with [his] heart and [his] beard and [his] putrefaction -- that in the infinite run it does not matter a jot that a North American girl-child named Dolores Haze has been deprived of her childhood by a maniac." On the other hand, if life is not a joke (that is, if the irrelevance of Lolita’s brutal deprivation of childhood cannot be demonstrated), than Humbert bears a heavy load of guilt and misery that can be assuaged only mildly, and then only by retreat into "the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art" (283). The fact, then, that Humbert has produced the narrative of his relationship with Lolita (which is, after all, "articulate art") at all suggests that he does feel that he bears some responsibility and guilt for the deprivation of Dolores Haze’s childhood.
This feeling of guilt makes possible the only basis on which Humbert Humbert can be an object of sympathy for the reader. As a lover, Humbert is unacceptably perverse. As a moral agent, he denies responsibility for his actions and is (as he describes himself on page 18) a poltroon. As a partner in a romantic and sexual relationship, he is manipulative and attempts to erase the individuality of his partner, who is coerced into their cohabitation. The load of guilt that he shoulders at the end of the novel, however, makes him possible as an object of sympathy, though it seems too little for ethical atonement.
References
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. New York: Vintage International, 1989.
Space for this page provided by
Get your own free home page.
