Since its initial printing in 1955, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov has sold over 50 million copies, according to National Public Radio, a reversal from the difficulty Nabokov faced to even get the novel published. Lolita was rejected from several American publishers and was ultimately published by Olympia Press, a French publishing company best known for publishing erotic fiction.1 The novel was not even published in the United States until 1958.2 Lolita is a shocking and disturbing story of pedophilia, sexual abuse, and manipulation, but it has remained a long-lasting influence on our culture even nearly 65 years later.
Nabokov, a Russian-born American author, had previously written works with similar themes to Lolita, which indicates that Lolita is likely the culmination of his ideas and was a long-time coming. Nabokov had initially planned on publishing Lolita under a pseudonym, which suggests that he knew the controversy it would provoke, although the pseudonym would just have been an anagram of his name, so it seems that he did not care to completely distance himself from it.3 In the end, Nabokov agreed to publish it under his own name.
Despite being originally published in France, Lolita was banned in France from 1956 to 1958. Lolita was also banned in the United Kingdom, Australia, Burma (today, Myanmar), Belgium, and Austria, in addition to some places in the United States, including the Cincinnati Public Library.4 Lolita follows a pedophile called Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man obsessed with girls between the age of eight and fourteen. He dehumanizes the young girls he is attracted to by calling them “nymphets” and projecting a sense of sexuality onto them. Pedophilia, the sexual attraction to children, is disgusting and disturbing, so it is no wonder that the book became instantly controversial and was banned in many countries. However, perhaps in part due to the controversy surrounding the novel, it became a best seller and is still considered a literary classic today.
The plot of Lolita goes as follows: Humbert marries Lolita’s mother, Charlotte, to stay closer to Lolita—a move that is reminiscent of Woody Allen’s marriage to his former stepdaughter—and takes in Lolita following her mother’s death. They travel across the United States while engaging in a sexual relationship, eventually settling in Beardsley, before Lolita was kidnapped. Humbert tracks down the kidnapper and murders him, which leads to his imprisonment.
Lolita features a frame narrative and an unreliable narrator. In the foreword, a fictional psychologist, John Ray Jr., writes that the Confessions of a White Widowed Male, which constructs the bulk of the novel Lolita, was written by a man given the alias Humbert Humbert while in prison, whose lawyer gave it to Ray to publish after Humbert’s death. Throughout the novel, readers do not get to know Lolita’s thoughts or feelings. Readers only know of how Humbert interprets Lolita’s words and actions, but he is a pedophile attempting to justify his own actions. Humbert projects his feelings and desires onto Lolita, and readers can only grasp a sense of what Lolita may be feeling as she is sexually abused by her stepfather while they travel across the country together after her mother’s death, with mentions of how she “sobs in the night—every night, every night.”5
More disturbing than the novel Lolita itself is how it has been embraced and ingrained in popular culture today, with the assistance of the 1962 film Lolita, which cemented the imagery and iconography of Lolita. Lolita references are rampant throughout popular culture. Female pop stars, including Katy Perry and Lana Del Rey, the latter of whom has even released a song titled “Lolita,” frequently reference Lolita in song lyrics and imagery. The Police reference Nabokov in the song “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” which is about a teacher and a schoolgirl. The film Manhattan (1979), written and directed by the aforementioned Woody Allen, who also allegedly molested his daughter when she was seven, depicts a relationship between a middle-aged man and a seventeen-year-old girl and references Nabokov by name.
Rather than maintaining the focus on Humbert, the protagonist of Lolita, a pedophile who rapes and sexually abuses his stepdaughter, society has narrowed in on Lolita, portraying her as Humbert viewed her—an instigating, sexually promiscuous, enticing girl—instead of a child victim sexually abused by her stepfather who cried every night. Viewing the victim as the perpetrator sees her certainly has some dangerous, concerning implications for our society. Even Vanity Fair’s review of Lolita, which is quoted on the back of Random House Vintage International’s 50th Anniversary Edition of the novel, perpetuates Lolita as a romance novel, rather than an abuse novel, referring to it as “the only convincing love story of our century.”
Although Lolita does not condone pedophilia, popular culture has taken off with its themes and imagery, exacerbated by the 1962 film of the same name, which, due to censorship restrictions, featured a slightly older Lolita (fourteen instead of twelve) and downplayed Humbert’s pedophilia and sexual abuse. The imagery and iconography from the film—particularly the heart-shaped sunglasses and lollipop6—have contributed considerably to the treatment of Lolita—or what people perceive Lolita to be—in the modern day.
The novel remains controversial, especially after the Me Too movement, which is a movement against sexual assault and harassment, but many still regard Lolita as a romantic story of forbidden love, bringing about positive Lolita references even from female artists. The relationship between Lolita and Humbert, if it could even be called that, is romanticized in popular culture. Humbert is clearly a cruel, selfish, and abusive man in the novel, but in popular culture, people focus on the character of Lolita—hardly on Humbert at all—and disregard Nabokov’s writing to continue the perception of Lolita as an attractive bad girl who lusts after older men. The name Lolita itself has become a noun recognized by dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary, meaning a sexually precocious young girl.
Unlike many controversial, incendiary texts, Lolita is considered a literary classic, placing the novel in an interesting position in which reading it could be encouraged or forbidden. The controversy around Lolita remains even over half a century later, and will likely remain in the foreseeable future, due its subject matter and the misconstrued characterization of Lolita throughout popular culture. Lolita is not an easy read, because readers are in the head of a pedophile, and Nabokov does not hesitate to write Humbert’s repulsive thoughts, portraying him as a selfish, murderous pedophile. However, Lolita is a well-written novel, and if it takes reading Lolita for people to finally understand the true character of Lolita and the nature of the novel, then it should be read more widely and deeply.
Lolita’s literary merit and significant influence in popular culture cannot be denied. Lolita has transcended Nabokov’s novel and become a wildly misunderstood character transformed from a child victimized by her stepfather to a sexual icon of sorts, representing a sexualized, lustful, naughty young girl. By no means should Lolita ever be banned, but it needs to be reconsidered—and ideally, reread—by the world at large to recognize the depth of Nabokov’s writing and bring the character of Lolita the justice she deserves.
Bibliography
Arons, Rachel. “Designing ‘Lolita.’” The New Yorker, 2013, https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/designing-lolita (accessed October 25, 2019).
Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990.
McGrath, Charles. “50 Years on, ‘Lolita’ Still Has Power to Unnerve.” The New York Times, 2005, https://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/24/books/50-years-on-lolita-still-has-power-to-unnerve.html (accessed October 25, 2019).
Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. New York, NY: Random House Inc., 1997.