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Re: odd moment in Lolita? (fwd) (fwd) (fwd) (fwd)
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------------------ Hello,
I read the question of Dolores's flirtatious, "tough," but innocent
sexuality just as Suellen does. While Dolores may view intercourse with
Humbert, at first, as no different than "the game she and Charlie had
played" (133), she has no idea of the stakes involved--especially because
Humbert doesn't tell her that Charlotte is dead until afterwards (and then
only when she seems intent on telling her mother what he has done to her).
By the way, the treatment of this same issue in Ball's American
Beauty--although Angela Hayes poses, flirts, and boasts about sexual
conquests, it turns out that she is completely inexperienced--provides a
useful comparison.
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
Associate Professor of English
Holy Cross College
>>> chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu 07/09/04 21:10 PM >>>
------------------
> ED. I'm inclined to agree with Brian's "teasing/mocking" take.
> Readers are
> inclined to be "over protective" of LO. In part she may regard
> the night
> with HUM as a game much like her sport with Charly at Camp Climax.
Perhaps not. Lolita/Dolly Haze IS a "tough cookie" but I still don't think
that she sees even this first encounter with HUM in the same way as her
dalliances with Charly, though certainly she does
continue to be her sarcastic self. In one of my favorite passages,
VN subtly, complicatedly, illustrates how Lolita/Dolores passes
from childhood sex to adult sex on the day of their morning
encounter. Humbert, by not understanding the difference between
the two, destroys Dolly even if she herself did start the seduction
that morning.
As even Humbert says, he should have listened to the real child or
her mother (the haggard angel behind her back?), instead of the
"cheap cutie" she loved to imitate. [pg 127 in my somewhat obscure
edition]
Here is the first tip off.
"While eager to impress me with the world of tough kids, she was
not quite prepared for certain discrepencies between a kid's life
and mine" p.136
After the initial encounters (Humbert tells us at least three that
morning), Dolly cheerfully rattles off, one kid to another, the
details of her juvenile "sex life". Slowly, the fun begins to
wear off and Dolly realizes that Humbert is not really a charming "hunk"
but the useless adult in charge of her and now obsessed with his precursors
and her sexuality.
"a queer dullness replaced her usual cheerfulness" p.142
Even Humbert feels that he is "sitting with the ghost of somebody
he has just killed"
(probably both LO AND Charlotte at this point). Perhaps sex with
Charley had been less rigorous. A pain flits across her face for
the first time. She calls him a "brute". Humbert has overdone it.
They see a squashed squirrel. Still trying to be a tough kid, she
says with sarcasm and now pain " I was a daisy fresh girl,...you
raped me". They nearly run over another small animal. Dolores Haze
goes into the filling station and is probably bleeding as indicated
by the box of sanitary pads Humbert buys in the next town. Her
mother is dead and so is her childhood.
On first reading, all we hear is Humbert, but with each successive
reading brave, brash, Dolores Haze is everywhere. I've never really
understood those who say she has no voice. In the case of the
pointed "rape" comment, it seems to me that she is still dependent
on Humbert so it is a way of both "yanking his chain" as someone else has
already commented, and letting him know that she really did hold him
accountable for what was lost.
---Suellen
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
---------------------------------------
Stringer-Hye, Suellen
Vanderbilt University
Email: suellen.stringer-hye@Vanderbilt.Edu
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L
I read the question of Dolores's flirtatious, "tough," but innocent
sexuality just as Suellen does. While Dolores may view intercourse with
Humbert, at first, as no different than "the game she and Charlie had
played" (133), she has no idea of the stakes involved--especially because
Humbert doesn't tell her that Charlotte is dead until afterwards (and then
only when she seems intent on telling her mother what he has done to her).
By the way, the treatment of this same issue in Ball's American
Beauty--although Angela Hayes poses, flirts, and boasts about sexual
conquests, it turns out that she is completely inexperienced--provides a
useful comparison.
Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
Associate Professor of English
Holy Cross College
>>> chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu 07/09/04 21:10 PM >>>
------------------
> ED. I'm inclined to agree with Brian's "teasing/mocking" take.
> Readers are
> inclined to be "over protective" of LO. In part she may regard
> the night
> with HUM as a game much like her sport with Charly at Camp Climax.
Perhaps not. Lolita/Dolly Haze IS a "tough cookie" but I still don't think
that she sees even this first encounter with HUM in the same way as her
dalliances with Charly, though certainly she does
continue to be her sarcastic self. In one of my favorite passages,
VN subtly, complicatedly, illustrates how Lolita/Dolores passes
from childhood sex to adult sex on the day of their morning
encounter. Humbert, by not understanding the difference between
the two, destroys Dolly even if she herself did start the seduction
that morning.
As even Humbert says, he should have listened to the real child or
her mother (the haggard angel behind her back?), instead of the
"cheap cutie" she loved to imitate. [pg 127 in my somewhat obscure
edition]
Here is the first tip off.
"While eager to impress me with the world of tough kids, she was
not quite prepared for certain discrepencies between a kid's life
and mine" p.136
After the initial encounters (Humbert tells us at least three that
morning), Dolly cheerfully rattles off, one kid to another, the
details of her juvenile "sex life". Slowly, the fun begins to
wear off and Dolly realizes that Humbert is not really a charming "hunk"
but the useless adult in charge of her and now obsessed with his precursors
and her sexuality.
"a queer dullness replaced her usual cheerfulness" p.142
Even Humbert feels that he is "sitting with the ghost of somebody
he has just killed"
(probably both LO AND Charlotte at this point). Perhaps sex with
Charley had been less rigorous. A pain flits across her face for
the first time. She calls him a "brute". Humbert has overdone it.
They see a squashed squirrel. Still trying to be a tough kid, she
says with sarcasm and now pain " I was a daisy fresh girl,...you
raped me". They nearly run over another small animal. Dolores Haze
goes into the filling station and is probably bleeding as indicated
by the box of sanitary pads Humbert buys in the next town. Her
mother is dead and so is her childhood.
On first reading, all we hear is Humbert, but with each successive
reading brave, brash, Dolores Haze is everywhere. I've never really
understood those who say she has no voice. In the case of the
pointed "rape" comment, it seems to me that she is still dependent
on Humbert so it is a way of both "yanking his chain" as someone else has
already commented, and letting him know that she really did hold him
accountable for what was lost.
---Suellen
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
---------------------------------------
Stringer-Hye, Suellen
Vanderbilt University
Email: suellen.stringer-hye@Vanderbilt.Edu
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
D. Barton Johnson
NABOKV-L