Who
is Lolita?
"Lolita" is the russian writer Vladimir Nabokov's most famous novel, and was first published in 1955.
Lolita is first of all a linguistic performance, a verbal achievement, a whole example of subtlety punctuated with resonant sentences in French.
The novel, that was put in print by a French erotic publishing house, labeled as pornographic, managed to seduce the cine director Stanley Kubrick, who decided to adapt it for the screen, giving the story its definitive success. The script was written by Nabokov himself.
One can wonder if Lolita is a love novel, it's anyway considered as an erotic novel. The moral notions reminiscent of the concept of "perversion", caused by the psychological focuses, raise doubts on the fact it could properly be a love novel. However, Humbert loves her, in his own way.
The true Lolita's story takes place in a fictitious world. In a man's mind, lovingly and sexually influenced by an obsession, writing a story about what he imagines he perceives.
“LOLITA, THE NOVEL”
As a teacher, Humbert Humbert leaves Europe for the United States, and rents a room in Charlotte Haze's house after meeting her and her daughter Dolores who were having a sunbath in the garden. Dolores is twelve years old and is affectionately called "Lo" or "Lolita". Her mother is a lonely widow who unconsciously turns into the link between Humbert and her daughter. Very soon, Charlotte and Humbert get married. One day, Charlotte finds his new husband's diary, full of confessions about his obsession for Lolita and his disappointment for his new wife. Sad and angry, she goes out of her house quickly and dies knocked down by a car.
Then Humbert becomes the legitimate tutor in charge of the young Lolita, with whom he lives for a period during which his wishes to possess her increase. Humbert starts traveling all along the U.S.A., from motel to motel, accompanied by Lolita, with whom he lies thereto. Everything starts after a series of attempts from Humbert, who remains surprised as realizing Lolita had already discovered some of the secrets of sex during a holiday camp, the Q. holiday camp. This letter corresponds to the Quilty first name's initial. Clare Quilty, a degenerate artist, ends up with their relation as he convinces Lolita to leave Humbert and to escape with him.
In the end of the novel, when Humbert briefly meets up with Lolita, it's only to give her the money she had been asking him to be able to start from scratch with her new husband, in Alaska. That is the moment Humbert understands he still desires Lolita, not only for the sexual attraction he felt for this kind of women, but also because he is really in love with her. The novel finishes by an episode of refined violence we are not going to reveal.