Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
"Lolita," a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, is a controversial and complex narrative that explores themes of obsession, manipulation, and the nature of desire. The story is narrated by Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man who becomes infatuated with a twelve-year-old girl named Dolores Haze, whom he nicknames Lolita. The novel begins with Humbert's account of his life, detailing his early experiences and his obsession with young girls, whom he refers to as "nymphets."
Set against the backdrop of post-World War II America, Humbert marries Lolita's mother, Charlotte Haze, in a calculated move to be closer to his obsession. After a series of manipulative events, including Charlotte's untimely death, Humbert abducts Lolita and embarks on a cross-country journey filled with moral complexity and psychological tension. As they travel, Humbert struggles with his guilt and the societal implications of his actions while trying to maintain control over Lolita’s life.
The novel culminates in Humbert's eventual confrontation with Clare Quilty, a figure who also desires Lolita and represents the external threats to her innocence. Through its provocative subject matter and intricate prose, "Lolita" has sparked extensive debate regarding its themes and the ethics of its portrayal of relationships, positioning itself as a significant work in literary discussions surrounding obsession and the boundaries of love.
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
First published: 1955
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Satire
Time of plot: 1910–52
Locale: France and numerous small American towns
Principal Characters
Humbert Humbert , an intellectual from FranceDolores Haze , his stepdaughterCharlotte Becker Haze Humbert , Lolita’s mother, Humbert’s second wifeClare Quilty , a playwrightRita , Humbert’s traveling companionMiss Pratt , a girls’ school headmistressRichard F. Schiller , Dolly’s husbandAnnabel Leigh , Humbert’s first loveValeria Humbert , Humbert’s first wifeJohn Ray Jr. , an academic and editor
The Novel
After the death by heart attack of Humbert Humbert, before he was to be tried for murder, his lawyer asks John Ray Jr., PhD, to edit the accused murderer’s last manuscript. It is titled “Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male.” Dolores Schiller, the girl Humbert calls Lolita, dies giving birth to a stillborn daughter a few weeks after Humbert’s fatal heart attack. Ray defends the manuscript against charges of pornography and claims it will become a classic in psychiatric circles.
Humbert’s confession begins with a summary of his life from his birth in 1910 until his discovery of Lolita in 1947. He was born in Paris to an English mother and a Swiss father, who ran a luxurious hotel on the Riviera. At thirteen, he fell in love with Annabel Leigh, who was close to his age, and experienced unfulfilled lust. Four months later, Annabel died of typhus. He had been haunted by her memory until he found her essence reincarnated in Lolita. After studying English literature in Paris, Humbert became a teacher and discovered himself drawn to certain girls between the ages of nine and fourteen, whom he calls “nymphets.” Trying to lead a conventional existence, he was married to Valeria from 1935 until 1939, when she left him for a Russian taxi driver; she later died in childbirth.
Humbert then relates how, at the start of World War II, he moves to the United States. After his second stay in a mental institution, he seeks refuge in the small New England town of Ramsdale, where he rents a room from Charlotte Haze, a widow, after seeing her twelve-year-old daughter, Dolores, known as Lo to her mother, Dolly to her friends, and sometimes Lolita. The darkly handsome Humbert soon discovers that he resembles some singer or actor on whom Lolita has a schoolgirl crush. When the girl goes away to summer camp, Humbert decides that he cannot live without her. Then Charlotte leaves a note for Humbert in which she confesses her love for him and orders him to marry her or leave her home. They marry, and afterward he hints to her friends that he and Charlotte had had an affair thirteen years previously, and he begins to regard Lolita as his child. Humbert decides that he must somehow get rid of Lolita's mother, his wife, but he cannot bring himself to kill her.
Humbert’s problem is solved when Charlotte breaks into his locked desk to read his journal and discovers his disdain for her and his lust for Lolita. As she is crossing the street, in an emotional turmoil, to mail some letters incriminating him (for protection, having read of his desire for her death), she is struck and killed by a car. Humbert recovers the letters, plays the role of a grieving widower, continues planting suggestions that he is Lolita’s real father, and announces plans to take the girl on a trip west.
Humbert retrieves Lolita from her summer camp on the pretext that her mother is ill and takes her to a hotel called the Enchanted Hunters. As Humbert relates it, before he can break the news of her mother’s death to her, Lolita seduces him and afterward reveals that she lost her virginity to the son of the camp director. Humbert is immediately consumed by guilt but continues to have sexual relations with her. When Lolita demands to call her mother, Humbert tells her that Charlotte is dead.
Humbert and Lolita begin traveling from motel to motel across the United States. Seeing how other adult men are attracted to the young girl, Humbert is constantly on his guard. He is also aware of the repercussions that await him if his criminal treatment of Lolita is discovered.
After a year and some twenty-seven thousand miles on the road, they return east to Beardsley, where Lolita attends a private girls’ school. Miss Pratt, the headmistress, convinces Humbert to let Lolita play the lead in the school’s production of a new play, The Enchanted Hunters. Just before the play is to open, Lolita announces that she hates school and the play and wants to travel again. Humbert has been told that the playwright, Clare Quilty, a man whom Lolita has falsely identified as “some old woman,” has been raving about the young actress. Humbert and Lolita set out again, and Humbert takes with him a gun once owned by Harold Haze, Lolita’s father. He feels he might need it after he notices they are being followed by a red convertible and he discovers Lolita talking to a stranger who resembles Gustave Trapp, Humbert’s cousin.
In the town of Elphinstone, Lolita develops a high fever and is hospitalized. Humbert becomes incapacitated by fever as well, and while he is ill, Lolita is checked out of the hospital by “her uncle, Mr. Gustave.” Humbert spends the next four months searching for her and her abductor, tormented by the taunting clues left by his nemesis. In a northeastern bar, he meets Rita, an alcoholic, suicidal young woman; the two then travel together for two years. Eventually Humbert receives a letter from Lolita, now Mrs. Richard F. Schiller, and he goes to see her. She is living in the dismal town of Coalmont, pregnant and married to a young Korean War veteran. He is surprised at how much he still loves the haggard, seventeen-year-old housewife.
Lolita tells Humbert the identity of her abductor, Clare Quilty, and tells him how Quilty had wanted her to perform in pornographic home movies and had thrown her out when she refused. Humbert gives her four thousand dollars so that she and her husband can move to Alaska, and then he sets out to find Quilty. After returning to Ramsdale to sign over all his money and possessions to Lolita, Humbert tracks Quilty down in the town of Parkington and, after a lengthy confrontation, shoots and kills him.
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