Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0004687, Fri, 14 Jan 2000 10:30:11 -0800

Subject
Re: VN/Dostoevsky--rape of Lolita (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Susan Elizabeth Sweeney <ssweeney@holycross.edu>

I'm not quite sure that I understand Walter Miale's question. Certainly,
Humbert committed an act of statutory rape upon Lolita at the Enchanted
Hunters. (I don't think the revisionists of the novel's timeline have
doubted that central incident yet, have they?)

Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
Associate Professor of English
Holy Cross College
ssweeney@holycross.edu


<<< Donald Barton Johnson <chtodel@humanitas.ucsb.edu> 1/ 8 4:30p >>>
I found the comparison very interesting, but:

>Both Humbert and the underground man are unreliable narrators, and their
>unreliability takes on precisely the same quality. They faithfully record
>the basic events of their respective stories; we have no reason to doubt
>the facts they describe.

What makes anyone certain that HH did not rape Lolita in The Enchanted Hunters?

Walter Miale