A Postcolonial view of The Annotated Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The infamous story of Lolita by author Vladimir Nabokov has been a controversial one since its first release in America in November 1958. The publishing world and the average readers were not prepared or interested in reading a story about a middle-aged pedophile and his twelve year old stepdaughter. People were outraged by the book and were repulsed by it, but as the moth is drawn to the flame, so are curious minds and within one week, Lolita became a best-selling book.
Author Vladimir Nabokov was born in Russia on April 22, 1899 during a time when socially acceptable rules were very different than what we practice in today’s society. During the 19th century in Europe, it was common for a man to marry a young girl of only 10 years of age. We can only speculate, that Nabokov writes about the sexual relationship between father and daughter as acceptable through the eyes of Humbert, since this may have been behavior that was familiar to him through friends and family in Russia and his travels throughout Europe. In this story, we can apply the postcolonial theory to the Western born Humbert to the colonization of Dolores Haze. The Europeans invaded America and wanted them to convert to their culture. They also help power over the new land and carried themselves with an air
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Originally, when she met Humbert she was innocently attracted to him as sometimes young girls are with handsome older men, but during this time in her life, she was no longer attracted to him. By this time, she was well aware of what was going on and how wrong it was, but still at such a young age and without family and no alternative, she felt as if she had nowhere else to go. Eventually, Dolores had had enough and made her escape and put an end to this
Dolores Claiborne is a book written by Stephen King. Most people hear his name and think of horror, however the monsters used in this book are human beings. This book is not like the typical books written by King. Dolores Claiborne is about a woman with a foul temper and mouth who has been living on Little Tall Island off the coast of Maine all her life. The story is told in first person from none other than Dolores herself. Dolores has just been arrested for the murder of Vera Donovan, her rich long time employer. Dolores trying to explain what happened tells her life story and tries to prove it wasn’t her fault by telling about how she killed her husband Joe many years ago. The language and the way Dolores speaks is hard to get used to at first. After a while the reader catches on and can better understand the story. The murder mystery part of this book is just the hook, the true nature of the relationship between Vera and Dolores is the real mystery. It
In the book “Reading Lolita in Tehran”, the author portraits a story of oppression towards Iranian woman and the kind of life they go through. As known, some Iranian men are commonly known for their sexism and oppression towards the woman population in Iran. The story takes place during and after the revolution in Iran. During this period the Iranian State was transitioning into an extremist Islamic regimen.
Furthermore, as Lolita can be considered an open text and this paper is concerned with bringing female perspectives to the forefront of the novel, it is reasonable to apply traditional feminist theory to the text to examine Humbert’s marginalisation of women. In particular, this reading will be formulated through applying the work of second-wave feminist Kate Millett, which focuses on exposing the reprehensibility of patriarchal oppression. To begin, Nabokov consistently constructs Humbert to display misogynistic views. To illustrate this, in the scene where Humbert recalls his sexual excitement when Dolores laid across his lap, he fantasizes about being ‘a radiant and robust Turk…enjoying the youngest and frailest of his slaves.’ Due to the reader’s knowledge of Humbert’s affinity for ‘nymphets,’ whom he defines as girls between the age of nine and fourteen, it can be deduced that these ‘slaves’ are female. The word ‘frail’ holds connotations of debility, fragility and vulnerability. Through these negative associations, Nabokov has positioned readers to understand that Humbert views women as inferior to men. This holds relevance to Millett’s theory of female inferiority, through which she explains that ‘the female’s inferior status’ is ‘ascribed to her physical weakness or intellectual inferiority.’ Millett published her work in 1969 during the second wave feminist movement, whereby women demanded equality and challenged patriarchal ideologies regarding sexuality,
Her first non-children’s book was Fever 1793, although she took a yearlong break from that book to write Speak (Lew 23-25), her first true young adult novel. As she began writing for teens instead of children, she also began writing about more controversial issues, such as the rape and depression in Speak. Anderson has become “knownfor writing realistic books about controversial subjects for teens” (Deutsch). Not only does she write about these difficult topics, she approaches them with “humor and sensitivity” and “her work has earned numerous national and state awards, as well as international recognition” (“Laurie”). Speak itself was a National Book Award finalist and is a Pritz honor book the year it first came out (Lew 34). Despite this recognition, Wesley Scroggins, a Missouri State University professor, called the book “soft pornography,” and demanded that it be taken out of school curriculum (qtd. in Lew 35). Judy Blume, Anderson’s favorite author, backed Anderson in this situation, calling the claim “outrageous” (Lew 35). Clearly, Blume and Anderson won the battle because “[Speak has] been used in schools in order to not only teach literary analysis but also to teach and give students tools against sexual harassment” (“Voice”). The response to Speak can be better understood by learning about the time it was written.
Humbert Humbert has an obsession with what he calls ‘nymphets’ and later this obsession becomes fixated on a young girl by the name of Lolita. His interest in Lolita is both physically and intellectually obsessive and this can be related to Grenouille whose obsession also becomes physical. Humbert Humbert’s obsession is unique in that it doesn’t fit the society’s traditional view of paedophiles, but actually progresses further than that. He isn’t satisfied with just having sex with Lolita, but he wants to ‘fix once and for all the perilous magic of nymphets’. In the 1950s, when Lolita was written and published, attitudes towards sexuality were changing and people were becoming increasingly liberal. Through the evolution of psychology at the
This results in the narrative perspective of the novel demonstrating how Humbert attempts to conceal his true nature through, in his own mind, clever ‘adjustments’ to how the story is presented and references to historical figures who shared the same desires as him- ‘Oh Lolita, you are my girl, as Vee was Poe’s and Bea Dante’s’ (Nabokov 1955), yet often reverts to a disposition in which he laments about his monstrous desires. Not only this, but the comparison to famous literary greats suggests that Humbert considers himself to be of their status and thus possesses an idolized version of himself, a self which can easily transform language into ploys to conceal his true nature.
On one side, the Lisbon sisters lose their grip on what innocence truly means, allowing themselves to get caught in the fast moving pace of their youth. Without any outlet for their self-expression, they take their own lives out of pain and grief. The religious references and lively imagery paradoxically describe the lack of morality and the ultimate loss of life. Lo is no longer “Dolores on the dotted line,” but Lolita through and through (11). Humbert ripped her childlike innocence from her delicate fingertips, creating a wandering soul without roots.
Humbert Humbert’s Obsession of Dolores Haze Lolita is one of the Vladimir Nabokov’s most well-known novels. Nabokov is a Russian-American author, whose works have impacted popular culture. Lolita is one of the greatest novels in twenty-first century. It contains one of the most controversial characters in history.
Edgar Allan Poe married his aunt’s daughter Virginia, who at age thirteen was seven years his junior. Poe’s aunt also happened to be his landlady at the time (Lepore). In the same way, Humbert started an explicit relationship with Charlotte’s daughter, Dolores, age thirteen, after Charlotte’s death. Charlotte was Humbert’s landlady. This is an example of art imitating life. Humbert fancies himself a poet with discerning taste in “nymphets,” which excuses his preference for young girls because they are subhuman devils. Humbert
There is a town in Texas called Lolita; and in 1959, its people were enraged and embattled by the publication of “Lolita”, by Vladimir Nabokov. The name of their town now connoted rape, not patriotism, as it was originally named after a patriot’s daughter. But the people of this town decided to wait it out, as they figured the book’s popularity would have to lose steam eventually (Wells). This, of course, is taking a lot longer than anyone expected. The book Lolita, widely considered a classic and one of the best of the 20th century, has transformed into a part of pop culture, though the book itself looses some of its meaning in doing so.
The use of language in literature can affect the way in which the reader interprets something. Language allows authors to manipulate the specific meaning he or she chooses to create. In the novel Lolita, written by Vladimir Nabokov, the narrator, Humbert Humbert, employs language in a specific manner meant to stimulate emotion in the reader. Rather than exposing him as a pedophile, the narrator’s altering speech is intended to accentuate the artistic nature for his inappropriate relationship with a young nymphette. This suggests that even the most alarming obsessions can be temporarily disguised by the splendor of his skills.
lolita is a book about abuse, and while some misguided souls do read it as
The relationship between Annabel and Humbert is one marked with sexual restraint. Humbert describes an important sexual encounter, when they escaped to a mimosa grove while their chaperones play bridge, in great depth and it is this encounter that haunts Humbert for the rest of his life. Shortly after this moment, Annabel is called away by her mother and Humbert never gets to reach his sexual climax. He also never sees Annabel again because she dies of typhus four months later. Because of her death, Annabel is kept sacred and perfect in Humbert’s memory. The unsuccessful first tryst plagues the rest of Humbert’s relationships with women. Ellen Pifer reiterates this in her book, Demon and Doll, saying that “It is Humbert’s longing for the unattainable, for ideal perfection – what he calls the ‘rosegray never-to-be-had’ – that fires his imagination and fuels his desire for nymphet beauty” (68). This unattainable perfection which Pifer speaks of appears to be the ever-young Annabel.
#1 The 1997 film adaptation of Lolita centres around the romance between middle-aged professor Humbert Humbert and a (very, very) young girl named Dolores Haze. Taking place in 1947, the story starts when Humbert, a French literature professor, begins living with the recently widowed Charlotte Haze. Being attracted to young girls his whole life, Humbert marries Charlotte to be around her daughter Dolores, who he calls “Lo”. Humbert and Lo then proceed to run away and go on a sex-filled motel hopping road trip before eventually settling in Beardsley, a college town where Humbert gets a teaching job. Lo, becoming increasing bored with Humbert and seeking adventure, leaves Humbert for a writer named Clare Quilty. Three years pass and Humbert receives a letter from Lo asking him for money. Quilty had tried to convince her to star in the child pornography he was producing, and when she refused, abandoned her. Now with Lo married and pregnant, Humbert tries to convince her to leave her husband to no avail. He then tracks down and murders Quilty. As the film ends, Humbert dies in prison awaiting trial and Dolores dies from complications in childbirth. The film was Directed by Adrian Lyne, known for the cult-classic horror film Jacob’s Ladder, as well as box-office hits Fatal Attraction and Indecent Proposal. Jeremy Irons co-stars as Humber Humbert alongside Dominique Swain, who plays Dolores Haze. The film was released in 1997, which was 35 years after Kubrick’s film adaptation of
Vladimir Nabokov, one of the 20th century’s greatest writers, is a highly aesthetic writer. Most of his work shows an amazing interest in and talent for language. He deceptively uses language in Lolita to mask and make the forbidden divine. Contextually, Lolita may be viewed as a novel about explicit sexual desire. However, it is the illicit desire of a stepfather for his 12-year old stepdaughter. The novel’s subject inevitably conjures up expectations of pornography, but there in not a single obscene term in Lolita. Nabokov portrays erotic scenes and sensual images with a poetic sensibility that belies the underlying meaning of the words. The beautiful manipulation of language coerces one to understand Humbert’s interdict act of