Source Evaluation

Originally, my intentions for this upcoming and long awaited essay was to write about Humbert Humbert's slash Vladimir Nabokov's perception about pedophilia, as it were displayed in this book. So, I typed in “pedophilia in Lolita” on Mr. Google Books. Various books quoted articles and essays that blame Lolita for seducing Vladimir. This confused me, because I had never trusted Humbert and, likeable as he may have been, I do not consider him forgivable for raping a young girl. The fact that Vladimir Nabokov had been able to create a pedophile who could manipulate the reader into liking him and hate the victim made me appreciate Vladimir Nabokov even more.
And now my intent is to analyze how Nabokov has managed to convince the public to side with a pedophile. I will explore Humbert's likeability as seen throughout the book as well as passages where it inaccurately appears as though Lolita is at fault. These include Humbert's description of Lolita's supposed first lover and the scene where she is increases her pay for Humbert's blow jobs. I think the final conclusion, with Lolita falling in love with a perverted man on a ranch, had been interpreted to mean that Lolita was a whore all along. In my opinion, however, Humbert completely ruined Lolita and her entire perception of sex and love. She would never have gotten pregnant for the second time at seventeen if it were not for him.
So far, I have found some pretty stellar sources with some pretty amazingly useful quotes that back up exactly what I mentioned. Want to see them? I bet you do. I ended up evaluated three sources, but you can stop reading after one if I went overboard with this assignment.

Source: Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita: A Casebook By Ellen Pifer

This source is useful because I need to prove that there are those who have sided with Humbert. Included on Humbert's side are the dictionary and Spy Magazine.

"Here is what the current Webster's tells us: 'Lolita. n. [from Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov] a precociously seductive girl." When Spy Magazine in 1999 sought to describe what some people wanted Chelsea Clinton to be, the phrase that presented itself was "a seductress, a Lolita." The context was a set of articles about "the new Lolitocracy," meaning the recent fame and open desirability of some very young girls, especially in spots and in the movies” (188).

This next quote interested me indefinitely because it describes how Lolita has appeared like an “unearthly creature” throughout the book. I agree with this assessment, but am not entirely sure how Nabokov pulls it off. I imagine it has something to do with Lolita's title as a “nymph.” This word makes her seem inhuman, and the more Humbert describes Lolita and the definition of nymphet, the more she seems like an untamed, wild creature who does not belong among humans. Notably, Humbert also calls Lolita demonic throughout the book.

"We imagine Lolita as special and demonic in our own terms, an unearthly creature masked by her American ordinariness, with an eerie identity far more fetching than mere beauty” (189).

The next quote also quotes 'Lolita' and does a lot of work for me in finding a passage to show how Humbert has made Lolita seem sex-hungry.

The text goes on to read, “You will remember that Humbert claims not to have seduced his stepdaughter (although he certainly planned to) but to have been seduced by her: 'Sensitive gentlewoman of the jury, I was not even her first lover.' 'I shall not,' Humbert says, 'bore my learned readers with a detailed account of Lolita's presumption. Not a trace of modesty did I perceive in this beautiful hardly formed young girl whom modern co-education, juvenile mores, the campfire racket and so forth had utterly and hopelessly depraved." (189)

Source 2: A companion to rhetoric and rhetorical criticism By Walter Jost, Wendy Olmsted

Nabokov's feelings towards Lolita might play a small role in my argument, but mainly I want the text to speak for itself instead of the author speaking for the text. In any event, Lolita's many escape attempts disprove the notion that Lolita wanted to have sex with the narrator. This quote mentions Nabokov's perception of Lolita.

"Lolita never expresses anything but repulsion for her victimizer. She spends years trying to figure out how to escape from him, and it is no doubt for her resourcefulness and bravery that Nabokov held her in such high regard....Nabokov once said, "of all the thousands of characters in my work...Lolita came in second in his list of those he admired most as people." When I think of her, I always hear her utterly archetypal cry, "Oh no, not again." (329)

In this next quote, I find more examples to prove that Lolita is widely regarded as a whore. My next step would be to disprove their interpretations of the texts. Mainly, I will focus on how Lolita's emotions were certainly violated. Humbert might try throughout to make Lolita seem like a whiny teenager, but her hatred of her father may be very real when not delivered from his perspective.

"Yet as Elizabeth Patnoe, among others, has patiently argued, Lolita is often figured in the popular imagination as a temptress. And even critics who have actually read the book and should therefore know better describe her in similarly distorted ways. John Hollander, in his famous early review of the novel, claims that 'On their first night together, Lolita turns out to be completely corrupt--and he goes on to refer to the pair as 'the lovers' and to the relationship that follows as 'their affair.' Lionel Trilling refers to "a Lolita who is not innocent, and who seems to have very few emotions to be violated." And Richard Schickel, who believes Lolita to be "the most repugnant of all females, a mid-twentieth century pubescent American girl-woman" describes Humbert as follows: "Humbert absurdly sensitive, catering ridiculously to the wins of a child, is a pathetic, almost tragic figure."


Special delivery: Epistolary Modes in Modern Fiction By Linda S. Kauffman

The following quote makes references to a scene that will be very important in my essay. In the end, it mentions that Lolita meant to use that money to runaway. While some have thought this made Lolita a whore, I think that Lolita's intentions truly mean she despised being used to meet Humbert's sexual cravings. It also offers an interesting argument about how readers can relate to Humbert's sexual cravings, which I did not consider before I read this quote.

"From the moment he first masturbates on the couch, Humbert proceeds to turn Lolita into a whore, euphemistically alluding to her vagina as a 'new white purse' and priding himself upon having left it "intact." By the time they reach the Enchanted Hunters Motel, he has begun paying her with pennies and dimes to perform sexually. Humbert defines his bribe as a "definite drop in Lolita's morals." The fact that she ups the ante from fifteen cents to four dollars has been seen by misogynist critics as a sign that she was a whore all along. Humbert says, 'O Reader...imagine me, on the very rack of joy noisily emitting dimes...and great big silver dollars like some sonorous, jingly and wholly demented machine vomiting riches; and in the margin of that leaping epilepsy she would firmly clutch a handful of coins in her little fist." Humbert implicitly assumes that his (male?) readers will identify solely with his sexuality and sensibility. The hilarity is undercut when we realize that Lolita is trying to accumulate enough money to run away." (69)

I might use this next quote to show how much Humbert had destroyed Lolita. Maybe Lolita felt comfortable being controlled by the media because at least that was normal. Being controlled by a sexual pervert is not necessarily the norm and caused her to crave normalcy. During her time at the school, her isolation was shown in her inability, due to Humbert in my opinion, to enjoy the opposite sex.

"Lolita is the ideal consumer: naive, spoiled, totally hocked on the gadgets of modern life, a true believer in the promises of Madison Avenue and Hollywood. Lolita is as much the object consumed by Humbert as she is the product of her culture. And if she is 'hooked', he is the one who turned her into a hooker. When Hubert sees a dismembered mannikin in a department store, Humbert comments vaguely that it is "a good symbol for something" and Dolly Haze comes to more and more resemble those mute, inanimate dolls on whose bodies consumer wares are hung. By the time of their final reunion n Gray Star, she has been so thoroughly prostituted that she assumes Humbert will only relinquish her rightful inheritance if she sexually serves him in a motel (69-70)".

Now that I have found all these sources, I am now an enlightened individual and future A plus essay writer. After looking at so many sources who quote people I disagree with, I feel like I am arguing against the dictionary. This is very excited in itself. I am eager to figure out just how this genius author made Lolita into an almost magical nonhuman demon, in particular through Humbert's often dream-quality language. I feel like I oftentimes argue for one side in my essays, and this will give me an opportunity to understand where the basis of the opposing argument lies and then to show why I disagree if a disagreement is in order.