So I read this book at a much slower pace than is normal for me with other books. I wanted to savor the writing. Not to mention staying near a computer while doing so in order to at least make use of Google translation for all the passages in French, though sadly said means was not up to the task of conveying what the author intended. So that's my first comment having nothing to do with the story and its subject matter. Just brilliant writing by Nabokov. All the more to think that English was likely his at least third new language after his native Russian. I've not read much by him, but will now.

So proceeding on to the discussion of the book with much thanks to the interesting observations already raised by others . . .

It was certainly disturbing reading the story though the eyes of an almost completely unapologetic pedophile. I would go further than to just execrate him for his sexual abuse of a 12 year old child. I do not know if all pedophiles whose attraction is to young girls are also misogynists, but Humbert certainly was. Was there any female character, and here I include Dolores Haze that he was really only sexually attracted to, that he felt any real affection or respect for? On the contrary I was overwhelmed by his near universal dislike and contempt for almost every female character he encountered, including his two wives. Even at the end when he attempts to show concern for Dolores and wish her well he still imagines himself her protector instead of her abuser, and attributes more noble motives to himself than to Claire Quilty despite the fact that if Quilty was to be believed Quilty never actually had sex with Dolores. In this he believes that he should only be convicted of the crime rape, Quilty's murder being justified.


It is also just creepy that he imagines himself Dolores protector in the future as well as the two of them sharing immortality together. So Humbert is a character that is impossible to like, and yet Nabokov does manage to at least make the reader understand his sick compulsion. In a way I am reminded of, from the excellent Friz Lang film “M,” the final plea by Hans Beckert (played by Peter Lorre) before the kangaroo court of criminals that means to sentence him to death for the murder of a number of young children:



Like Beckert one wants Humbert punished, wants to be sure he will never be able to harm another child, but has to at least give some acknowledgment to the irresistible obsession that drives him.

Sorry about the long post, but I want to get everything currently in my head down before I lose it. So on to my thoughts on some of the previous comments here.

I agree that it is off base to blame Dolores for Humbert's action. Whatever seductive behavior—in Humbert's eyes only or in reality—Dolores engages in it was just what is normal for female child of her age, not something that a middle age man who has become her surrogate father and on whom she is dependent should have in anyway have taken as justification to act on. It is interesting that Dolores refers to their first sexual coupling as rape and always expresses their sex as something distasteful, yet Humbert rationalizes that away.

As Desert Blues noted part of Dolores' tragedy was not just that Humbert by devious means entered her life, but that she had a mother who was jealous of her own daughter and when she found out about Humbert's desires her concern was not so much for her daughter, but anger at her own betrayal.



Interesting ideas there Crich70. As another thought I would quote Nabokov from his own notes at the end of my ebook version on the difficulty he had in getting an American company to publish it in around 1955::


So true of America in the 1950s!


I would like to comment on how laws and society have changed with respect to and adult having sex with a minor. When Jerry Lee Lewis [Lewis was 22 at the time] married his 13-year old first cousin in 1958 it was controversial, and temporarily killed his music career, that was temporary and there was never suggestion that he face criminal charges. Today though, except in certain countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, and certainly in the United States statutory rape charges would apply to even consensual sex with a girl under sixteen, and the man would be registered as a sex offender. In some ways this may have gone too far, for example labeling a 17-year old boy as a sex offender for sex with his 15-year old girlfriend. On the other hand when I look at how young girls, some very young hardly more than toddlers, are portrayed in some sexually suggestive ways in advertising, beauty contests, etc. it seems at cross purposes. That is relative to what I recall in my innocent childhood and teen years in the 1950s and 1960s. Which brings me to . . .


I have loved Shirley Temple films since I was not much older than she was when she made them. Now I am afraid I will never be able to get that thought out of my head when I watch them.