Book Review
Title: Lolita
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Genre: Classic
Rating: *****
Review: So I don’t normally read classics but at a friend’s recommendation I picked up Lolita and I wasn’t disappointed. I am going to put a disclaimer here that this novel does deal with the sexual abuse and rape of a child. If you aren’t comfortable reading about these acts or having them discussed please don’t continue with this review. I am reading Lolita for a college assignment, but I found myself greatly enjoying this book. Since its publication Lolita has divided audiences you either love it or hate it and the subject matter is also very hard-hitting as it deals with the relationship between an adult male and a 12-year-old girl and the consequences of that relationship. I must first start by saying the introduction to Lolita actually gives away a lot of the plot, but you are intrigued to see how these events come about. We also know that the novel is told from the perspective of Humbert Humbert looking back on the events of his life and specifically how he meets Lolita and subsequently fell in love with her, or rather the idea of her. The opening of Lolita introduces Humbert Humbert who is writing from prison his version of the events which have landed him in prison. We also know from the forward the both Lolita and Humbert are dead, she died in childbirth at 17 and he died in prison of coronary thrombosis. Following Humbert’s early years really gives the reader a sense of the kind of person he is. He is a good looking, intelligent, yet timid boy who falls in love with Annabel in his young teens and tries to pursue a sexual relationship with her but ultimately fails which is followed by her untimely death. This hits Humbert extremely hard and he finds himself very depressed and comparing all his lovers to his lost love and finding himself disappointed. However, aware of the social pressures surrounding him he tries to follow convention.
Humbert’s issues start with his love for Annabelle who he is enamored with, but her untimely death hurts him greatly and he seeks to recapture that naive enthralling feeling she evoked in him in any way he can. This leads to Humbert getting married again only to have his wife cheat on him and leave him for another man. He then takes a major prostitute binge to satisfy the perversion he has for young girls. None of this works, of course, we see him looking at real young girls, but he never speaks to or approaches them just watched from afar which is enough until he meets Charlotte Haze and her daughter Dolores who is Humbert’s Lolita. While I am not condoning Humbert’s actions in any way I can’t ignore the fact that for nearly three decades he tries to suppress that side of himself, before eventually letting those desires take over him.
In the time between Annabel’s death and Humbert’s first marriage, he has several mental breakdowns which lead to more than one stint at a mental institution. Returning from his third stay at the asylum he gets married to Valeria. This marriage isn’t a good one as Valeria ends up cheating on Humbert and leaving him, the only that enrages him about this is that Valeria blames him for the collapse of the marriage. It turns out Humbert was indifference about their marriage as she doesn’t fit the type of girl he is attracted to. Before and after this marriage falls apart he turns to prostitutes for release as he can ask them to dress a certain way or act a certain way to please him however he soon finds himself getting into trouble and finds an out in a trip to America where he works cresting adverts for a relative perfume company as is stated in the terms of his inheritance. It is hereby a twist of fate that he ends up lodging with Charlotte Haze and her daughter; Dolores, the titular Lolita. After meeting Lolita or Lo as he refers to her he knows that he can’t leave despite how much he dislikes Charlotte.
Due to some timely circumstances, Humbert ends up becoming the Haze’s lodger in order to stay close to Lolita. But she isn’t interested in him one bit. Her mother takes a great interest in Humbert, but he doesn’t really want anything to do with her. However, he does seem to develop a relationship with Charlotte even if it is under the guise of staying close to his Lolita. However, as time progresses Charlotte wants to spend more time with Humbert and ends up sending Lolita away to summer camp. It is here we get the first major inclination that their relationship is going to progress further, as Lolita prepares to let her mother take her way for two months she races back inside to give Humbert a hug along with a passionate kiss, implying that although she is young Lolita may have some hidden feeling for Humbert too. There are some smaller scenes before this, but they all seem rather one-sided especially since Humbert is constantly torn between his desires and social norms.
Life with the Haze’s suits Humbert and he manages to build an emotional bond with Lolita as she has quite a strained relationship with her mother and he fills the empty father role as Mr. Haze has passed. However, Charlotte complicates matters as it is clear that she has feelings for Humbert which he has no desire to reciprocate. The first encounter where we see Humbert’s dark desires come to light is when Lolita is left home with him while her mother goes to church and he ends up getting himself off while she sits in his lap. It isn’t clear at this point if Lolita is aware of Humbert’s desires towards her but it is clear she suspects his actions aren’t completely innocent but does and says nothing about them. Charlotte throws a further spanner in the works when she declares she is sending Lolita away to summer camp in order to make her move on Humbert. While he plans to leave and then return when Lolita returns he also believes that this time will be wasted so actually decides to stay during the summer. One the day Lolita leaves he is heartbroken, but something changes when Lolita rushes back and kisses him before her departure giving him hope that when she returns she will be his at last.
During the summer Humbert is left alone with Charlotte and he decides to marry her in order to disguise his desires towards Lolita as it isn’t abnormal for a stepfather to comfort and hold his daughter. Charlotte is overjoyed by this and forms a plan of her own. When Humbert learns that she plans to send Lolita to boarding school as soon as she returns from Camp Q he is angry at her deception. Up until his point, he has been a very passive party in their relationship and he puts his foot down and tries to assert his dominance over her but it doesn’t work as planned. While Charlotte does back down from the holiday she doesn’t back down on sending Lolita away. Shortly after this, she discovers Humbert’s journal which he tries to write this off as a new novel, but she doesn’t buy it completely as is getting ready to leave Humbert and take his beloved Lolita with her. Humber obviously can’t allow this to happen and tries to change her mind. He has previously contemplated killing Charlotte but doesn’t have the guts to go through with it but once and gain fate helps him out and gains Charlotte is hit by a car running to the mailbox and dies instantly. Being Charlotte’s husband this put him in charge of Lolita’s care, and he has careful spun webs to make everyone believe that he is Lolita’s real father so questions wouldn’t be asked when he disappears with her. He plans to collect her from Camp Q but isn’t sure what he should tell her. He decides that it is best to tell her that her mother is in the hospital before ultimately telling her that her mother has passed away but in between these two events he plans to make Lolita his with the aid of sleeping pills he got from the doctor for his insomnia. However, upon picking Lolita up from the camp he is greeted with the welcome he also wanted from her but also realizes that something has changed about his girl and sees the fact that she has taken her first step to truly becoming a woman. As the two stay the night in a hotel he plans to slip her the drugs and make her his. As expected this doesn’t go to plan when it turns out that the drugs aren’t sleeping pills at all and Lolita has been awake the whole time. Humbert contemplates this development through the night but when morning comes Lolita makes the first move and the pair become lovers but the most interesting thing about this is what happens next.
As the pair are leaving and moving onto their next destination, Lolita uses humor to cover how she is feeling which is hurting. Humbert feels genuine guilt at the fact their copulation has hurt his beloved Lolita, but he also feels the stirrings of desire again, but all her insults are in jest, but they still affect Humbert. After stopping at a gas station he makes the spontaneous decision to tell her that her mother is dead. Despite their uncomfortable day traveling that night, he gets them seperate rooms and she comes to him for comfort showing that despite their sexual interaction she stills holds some me sure of trust towards him. I also believe the fact that he lavishes her with gifts makes her believe that he genuinely cares for her and despite the controversy, I believe Humbert genuinely loves Lolita. As we cross into Part 2, we start to get a sense of what is happening to both Lolita and Humbert. As they journey all over the USA in the year between 1947 and 1948 we see cracks forming in Humbert’s blissful relationship. He blames this mainly on Lolita and her ability to attract almost everyone to her and they have a few close calls who being caught. Humbert uses manipulation and threats to make Lolita keep the relationship a secret, but it also seems like she is an active part of the relationship. That is until Humbert delivers the sentence; She wept, she wept. Every night the moment I feigned sleep. This tells us that something is wrong whether this is due to her mother’s death or her relationship with Humbert is still unknown as we don’t get Lolita’s perspective at all in this book.
After a while, Humbert decides to settle himself and Lolita in Beardsley and life becomes a little more normal as she attends school and he preserves their illicit affair. However, this peace doesn’t last long as teachers begin noticing that Lolita doesn’t exhibit normal behavior like other children her age and Humbert is called into the school more than once to discuss this. While he defends himself as a good father to his pseudo-daughter he fails to realize the emotional and psychological impact this is having on Lolita herself as she withdraws from boys her age and has little in the way of sexual attractions that girls that age should have. While it seems Lolita was a somewhat active part in their relationship not even she sees the damage it is doing to her and the impact this abuse will have on her in the long run. After being in Beardsley for some time Humbert is beginning to feel quite anxious and wants to move on but he constantly bends to the whims of Lolita. However, she is becoming more independent and is more forceful about deliberately making Humbert angry and while he never strikes her, he does grab her injuring her wrist on more than one occasion. After a devasting row between the pair, Lolita flees into the night forcing Humbert to look for her on foot. He finds her eventually at a telephone box but not before we get to see his increasing jealousy at Lolita’s interest in defying him any way she can despite his declining attraction to her. At this point in the novel, Humbert has known Lolita for over 2 years, she was 12 and a half when they first met meaning she is now almost 15. We know their relationship will be ending soon as Humbert states girls are only nymphets between the ages of 9-14 meaning Lolita has already lost the appeal that drew him in the first place. Something takes place during the phone call Lolita makes, she tells Humbert she was trying to reach him at home but it appears she was doing something else although Humbert doesn’t question it at the time.
After this argument, the pair go on the road again where Lolita frequently takes other lovers in his brief absences including a young father. After Humbert realizes she slept with this man we see the first instance where he forcibly rapes her to assert his dominance over her. We also learn that he carries with him a loaded gun just in case he needs it and as he has already labeled himself a murderer we know he uses it. It is here that Humbert becomes paranoid that they are being followed and this is proven right when he sees Lolita talking with the man following them and while they manage to evade him for a while, I get the feeling that is who Lolita called in Beardsley and she keeps him updated about their locations when they are on the move. With less than 100 pages to go in the novel, we are speeding towards the inevitable climax and I can’t wait to see how it ends. For a while, they resume their old routine but Humbert knows they are being followed and Lolita’s frequent infidelity doesn’t help his mood. However, things get interesting when one day Lolita disappears never to return, Humbert had expected this to happen before but she had always returned and he expected her to do so again but she never did. For the next two years, he tries to find her retracing their life together and finding nothing except mocking clues. After two tireless years he meets Rita, a lovely 3 times divorced woman who becomes his companion and they end up building a life together and Humbert tries to leave his Lolita behind.
One day he receives a letter from John Farlow who had been a friend when he was married to Charlotte informing him that he has remarried after his wife’s death and is moving away leaving the Haze estate to a lawyer friend they both knew. He also receives another letter from lolita herself telling him she has got married and is heavily pregnant asking for some money before she and her husband Richard (Dick) Schiller leave for Alaska. Humbert uses his intellect to track her down despite her deliberately not leaving a return address. Lolita obviously expected this and welcomes him into her home with only one condition that he not mention their past as she hasn’t told Dick about it and he agrees. Once again he meets his Lolita and realizes that despite her being 17 and heavily pregnant with another man’s child he still loves her and wants to take her away to be his again. He asks Lolita to recount the events that happened after she left and the identity of the man she left him for. Dolly does this informing him the man she ran again way with was someone he had met before and he had overlooked and dismissed him but she has fallen hopelessly in love. However, when strong-willed Dolly won’t bend to his whims he kicked her out leaving her and friend for more than 2 years moving from job to job, place to place until she met her now-husband and the rest is history. While Humbert still seeks revenge he wants Lolita more but she has left that part of her life firmly in the past. He hands over nearly 4 thousand dollars which is the income from her rented childhood home, enough money for her and her family to make themselves a good life in Alaska not knowing that in less than 3 months she would die giving birth to the child she lovingly carried. While Lolita doesn’t say it he knows that she feels like he broke her life whereas the man she left him for only broke her heart. The curious thing is that she never once went to the police and even now she doesn’t hate him she just treats him with indifference. As Humbert leaves his Lolita for the last time in tears that she won’t return to him, he sets out to achieve his revenge on the man who stole his Lolita from him all those years ago.
The final pages of Humbert’s memoir, his epic tale was devasting, Humbert finally achieves his revenge for his Lolita that was stolen from him but it doesn’t offer him the relief he was expecting. In fact, he feels a greater burden than ever and it isn’t long after the murder when he is picked up by the police and he doesn’t even attempt to run, finally achieving the closest thing he will get to peace in his life. As Humbert brings his tale to a close, the most devasting part is when you work out the rough date of the novel’s climax. We know Humbert visited Lolita on September 22nd and the murder takes place 2 days later on the 24th when he is arrested. He then spends 56 days from the day of his arrest writing his epic tale reading for court. 56 days is 8 weeks or two months make it December 24th, Christmas Eve wishing his Lolita a very long life with her family and prays that she is happy despite everything that has happened. The thing we know is that the very next day Lolita is going to give birth to a stillborn daughter and die herself and the book he asked to only be published when Lolita is dead. The only question I have is does Humbert die after learning of Lolita’s death knowing that the last time he spoke to her and looked her was going to be the last time ever. I honestly cried my eyes out at the end of this novel, the major thing I think people overlook is despite the relationship between them and the abuse he inflicted on her, Lolita doesn’t blame Humbert. She knows he is a monster that prays in children, but she wants nothing other than to live her life on her own which she does until her untimely death. We know she doesn’t blame Humbert because she wouldn’t have written to him or invited him into her home if she did, she also would have gone to the police at some point which she never did. I highly recommend Lolita, I am also going to be reading The Enchanter and Ada by Nabokov which follow similar themes, The Enchanter is known as the “pre-Lolita” as it is the same storyline but was written well before Lolita and Ada is much like Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma as it follows an incestuous relationship between siblings.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Also see: Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
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