What a Cool Pedophile JK

Before I read ‘Lolita’ by Vladimir Nabokov, I read an article in a communist Spartacist League newsletter written in defense of Roman Polanski, who had been charged with raping a minor. The Spartacist League defended Polanski by declaring that this girl was already sexually experienced and willing. I remembered this as I read ‘Lolita’, whose pedophiliac narrator also defends his actions by citing other culture’s sexual openness and Lolita’s sexual desires. This does not mean the author is defending pedophiles. Unlike the Spartacist League, which wants to represent itself as the trustworthy voice of the working clas, Humbert is portrayed as openly manipulative in instances such as when he tells the reader he has tricked his therapist into thinking he is a homosexual. Nabokov wants to test if we can resist manipulation by this knowledgeable, humorous, and well-spoken European we would usually trust.

As early as page 18, Humbert writes, “I found myself maturing amid a civilization that allows a man of twenty-five to court a girl of sixteen but not a girl of twelve." On page 19, he goes on to say, “Marriage and cohabitation before the age of puberty are still not uncommon in certain East Indian provinces. Lepcha old men of eighty copulate with girls of eight, and nobody minds.” It is true that some cultures promote what others condemn, but it is not necessarily true that many girls of eight do not "mind” the forced sex. Nonetheless, Humbert continues to say on page 135, “ “The stipulation of the Roman law, according to which a girl may marry at twelve, was adopted by the Church, and is still preserved, rather tacitly, in some of the United States.” Nabokov is fully aware that certain laws, such as the modern day illegalization of marijuana, have the ability to make actions like smoking marijuana seem either moral or immoral. He also knows that churches have the same ability to make acts, such as sex before marriage, virtuous or sinful. He therefore wants the reader to either fall for Humbert’s trap and decide he was not so wrong in having sex with Lolita, or to reject our ways of interpreting what is right and wrong.

In Greek mythology, nymphs are considered wild and sexually active. In labeling Lolita a nymphet, Humbert puts some blame on Lolita’s sexual nature, as if to say she wanted the sex. On page thirteen, the narrator says, “I touched her hot, opening lips with an utmost piety, tiny sips, nothing salacious; but she, with an impatient wriggle, pressed her mouth so hard to mine that I felt her big front teeth and shared a taste of her saliva.” Here it is Lolita who begins this sexual act. Later on, Lolita asks, “But we are lovers, aren’t we?” By the end of Part 1, Lolita leaves the separate room she is in, and goes to sleep with Humbert in the middle of the night. Humbert oftentimes calls Lolita an evil fiend, as though she is in control, but it is after all Humbert who is in control as to how the world is portrayed. If Lolita really did initiate the sex, I believe she is to blame, even if Humbert is somewhat at fault for going along with it. At one point, Humbert says, "[Lolita's mother] was more afraid of Lo's deriving pleasure from me than of me deriving pleasure with Lo" (56). Frequently in our society, the sexual act is consentual, and it is minor's parents who press charges, unwilling to admit to themselves that their sons or daughters went along with sexual intercourse with older men and women. In this text, it is up to the reader to decide whether or not our notions with pedophilia, in part delivered to us by equally manipulative cultures, governments, and religions, are worth trusting more than the narrator's plea for sympathy.