Reading "Lolita" Today

My choice of LOLITA is based partly on the fact that I had not yet read it and it is on the goodreads.com feminist book list. I chose to read it right away because a male friend of my daughter’s recommended it to her. Aware of the mythology surrounding the book, I wanted to read it so that I was aware of what my daughter would be reading. The fact of her reading it is not the issue, for I have a booklist from my teen years that would thrill Humbert Humbert, the child molester narrator of Nabokov’s LOLITA.

Before reading the book, and now subsequent to reading it, I wonder about its merits as a feminist book at goodreads.com. Literary criticism did not yield insights beyond the one reason I determined myself; LOLITA might be considered feminist because it recognizes female sexual development. Because of their prepubescent bodies, adults do not like to consider that twelve-year-olds may have a sexual nature. This is also a sign of natural development. For, if adults admire the emerging sexuality of pre-pubescent beings, they are likely of the same character as the child molester narrator of LOLITA. Thus, it is the mere recognition that a young woman or adolescent might have sexual inclinations that provides a tiny flame of feminism.

I did not sympathize with Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert, regardless of the author’s ability to employ clever literary conventions. I suppose much of this has to do with being a woman, and one who was as an adolescent, consciously aware of my own burgeoning sexuality. As I alluded to in my first paragraph, my teenage reading list included romance novels my friend’s mother collected and Nancy Friday’s MY SECRET GARDEN, a book about women’s sexual fantasies. When my town librarian spoke with my mother about my latter choice of reading material, I feigned innocence. I claimed that I requested the book because I thought it was THE SECRET GARDEN, a children’s book. (I’ll consider Friday’s book in another article, but again, Humbert Humbert would likely approve of my choice of reading material and my crafty way of covering the true intent of it.) Nabokov’s writing technique did not connect with my affinity for pun and metaphor. There were glimmers of appreciation wherein I nodded in happy agreement at some of his purposeful turns of phrase, such as when the narrator refers to the period of his possession of Lolita as her “nymphancy.” The obvious connection between that term and “infancy” met within my mind. At other points in the story, Humbert Humbert admits his immature state, and I enjoyed the way in which Nabokov allowed the narrator to convict himself of being an emotionally undeveloped man. Aside from a few little tidbits such as these, I found the book brimming with pretentious syntax and affected diction. (The irony of writing about things such as syntax and diction and referring to the writing as pretentious is not lost on me here.)

LOLITA was published in the 1950’s when the Kinsey Reports’ revelations about sexual behavior were released. If viewed in the context of its historical publication, LOLITA also introduced women’s sexual development to a public that otherwise collectively denied sexuality to women their entire lives. If we consider LOLITA from this vantage point, I believe this is why it might be considered feminist. Outside of the time of publication, such as today, when infants are sexualized with bikinis and high heels sold for feet that cannot even yet walk, LOLITA is a travesty for feminism. It is a cautionary tale that we did not heed. Instead, we’ve let advertisers and would-be child molesters foist sexuality on beings that have only just been born a physical sex. As Nabokov warns in the faked psychologist’s foreword in LOLITA, emerging sexuality is something entirely separate from depraved pedophilia, and the two should not intermingle.

First published: http://www.hercircleezine.com/2011/06/09/reading-lolita-today/