"A super-cute Lolita look"

Also Dostoyevsky experienced what it feels like to know you are going to die - he thought he was going to be executed before he was exiled. I think they even had him in front of a firing squad.

It has been a while since I read C and P but IIRC he killed the moneylender in order to pay his rent and do good deeds with the rest of the money.

C and P is a much better read, in my opinion, than Lolita. It is multi-layered and remains amazingly readable and contemporary. (Although, I don't know how reliable the translation I read was, am not Russian scholar!)

I struggled through the second half of Lolita with its clever wordiness and convoluted use of language. I found C and P unputdownable and very structured.

Again am struggling to remember, but aren't there some interesting female characters in C and P plus exploration of prostitution/poverty and the patriarchal nature of marriage? Certainly the characterization is brilliant.

I think Nabokov wanted to push boundaries with his book and explore certain themes - he used the characterization of the sort of person who would rape a 12 year old to do this. I'm uncomfortable with that. I also agree that this book does not help women and it doesn't seem that that was in anyway Nabokov's intention.

He must have known that the subject matter was going to make the book controversial and notorious - that seems massively disrespectful to abuse victims.

If Dostoyevsky had used the murder of a child in order to write C and P, I doubt I would have liked it so much.

I haven't read either of these books since becoming educated about feminism - it would be interesting to re-read them using feminist analysis.

Crime and PUnishment is far superior to Lolita. At least Dostoyevski had a point because he was making a political comment on the dreadful suffering that went on as a result of dire poverty, and he was saying that we all do things we wouldn't normally, when we're driven to it. And that was how he managed to get us to identify and empathize with a murderer

WTF was Nabokov's overriding theme? Ooh, some men can't help themselves and oh, it could happen to any man, but never fear, sexual predators do have a complex inner world and sometimes even a conscience: they're not all bad.
Did Nabokov's work help women in any way? THe answer is No. At a stretch, you might be able to say it didn't harm them (though I question that, especially with the misogynistic depiction of the mother- that wasn't double irony. We really are supposed to believe a woman could be as disgusting as Lolita's mother).. So his book did nothing to alter or question the status quo, which is that every single day on this planet some little girl is being raped just like Lolita was, by someone exactly like HUmbert

precisely Beachcomber, it reminds me of Crime and Punishment. I'd like Crime & Punishment more if it wasn't for the fact the murdered person was a woman, but because she was his landlady, demanding rent, i feel she had some power in society as a person and therefore might have been murdered as a person not just as a woman.

, Nabokov has to be given credit for his window-dressing, that's for sure. But at the end of the day men getting rich off the concept of old men fucking children, resulting in adulation from other men (and women?) for his "work" ain't new, however well you dress it up.

PUt simply. Lolita, the book, is sexy. I remember Dworkin saying that all that matters in popular culture, if there is a female involved is: is it sexy

Women being raped is sexy, women being murdered is sexy, (corpses are sexed up in CSI) ; women are sometimes in prison, therefore the concept of women being in prison is sexy. This is all it boils down to> Was Humbert raping Lolita sexy? That's all that counts in patriarchal art when men's worlds interact with women's.

"sakura you're getting to the point where it sounds like you're saying you're the only feminist on the planet"

SaF, when everyone is supporting the status quo opinion whereby popular opinion= patriarchal opinion and patriarchal opinion = popular opinion and the critics reviews reflect this, and your the only one offering an alternative opinion to the mainstream, it definitely feels.. how can I put it... lonely sometimes

I think what is highly disturbing about this book is that Nabokov is using the subject of sexual abuse as a mechanism.

He is using it to create a complex and disturbing subject matter that will allow him to write the sort of book he wants - one with an unreliable anti-hero narrator that will make people feel uncomfortable.

I agree with Sakura, that in terms of how this book can be regarded in relation to the real life subject of sexual abuse (as opposed to the academic one), I think only victims of real abuse could give a reliable insight.

I find it very disturbing that Nabokov refers to 'nymphets' himself when being interviewed.

I have also read that middle aged men being attracted to pre-pubescent girls is a recurrent theme in Nabokov's writings - I haven't read any other writings of his though so cannot verify.

In some ways Lolita reminded me of 'Crime and Punishment' in which murder is used as a literary mechanism to evoke certain emotions and thought processes in the reader.

I think this book has bolstered an idea of ambiguity about sexual abuse - the idea that young girls are erotic. This may not have been Nabokov's intention but I think his stance of intellectual objectivity doesn't help.

I find myself questioning Nabokov's motives for writing this book.

I hate all the Lolita fashion bullshit.

"The only people who can judge this book as good or bad are women who were themselves abused as children"

Does that mean that I can't judge whether a ghost story is a good book or a bad book because I don't have experience of ghosts?

What about a historical book? I wasn't alive in the period so I can't judge if the book is good or bad?

"no text can dictate how society will alter and promote it."

I think the book is excellent, and I can't read it and see Nabokov's intent as being to give a wink to predatory child abusers. I doubt he wrote the book meaning to say much about paedophilia at all.

But its existence does seem to have helped shore up society's belief that girls are complicit in their own abuse and often instigate it. While the text can't do anything about that, Nabokov could have. But he didn't.

ordinarily, yes.
but that isn't my opinion.

of course the text has been significantly remodelled for/ by the patriarchy, hence the film/s and the dodgy lolita fashion ads.

i don't know which reviews of the original book you are talking about. i haven't read any recent critique tbh, but recall none congratulating nabokov on his ability to create nudge nudge wink wink underage porn.

i could be wrong though. have you got any links? i thought most of the trad lit crit went the other way.

I have changed my mind. My opinion used to be yours

but you aren't going to change your mind and neither am i.
hey ho.

popular opinion= patriarchal opinion

It's interesting that when someone (usually a feminist) offers an alternative opinion to popular opinion it is assumed that she has misunderstood the text

we are being asked to put ourselves in the uncomfortable shoes of a predator - and to show what a thin line there is between his veneer of reality and every decent person's.

it serves to highlight how predators justify their behaviour.

no text can dictate how society will alter and promote it.

no tears are shed for lolita. that's definitely not the point of the book.

Wink wink nudge nudge is how this book is treated coupled with perhaps a sort of mortification at the grotesqueness.

"i think the book shows how victims of abuse are silenced."

honestly,

I think you're giving too many men, and popular culture in general the benefit of the doubt

I can see women here tying themselves up in knots. We've had double irony, we've now got women saying the silencing of the victim in Lolita is to show how victims are silenced.

What is so scary about taking this book, and its success, on face value

that? those

she is a caricature in humbert's eyes.

not necessarily that of the reader.

YEs I agree that empathy is possible without direct experience.

But you have to ask yourself the question

why are we being asked to empathize with a sexual predator

resulting in rave reviews from critics

the book does not empathize with the child; she is a charicature

empathy is impossible without direct experience?

i don't agree.

to experience abuse must be horrific, sakura. and it clearly has a lasting impact.

i think the book shows how victims of abuse are silenced. it doesn't silence them directly. it is a work of fiction.

I think the book silences victims of child abuse

the incessant ramblings of Humbert's thoughts silence the victim

So my main point:

The only people who can judge this book as good or bad are women who were themselves abused as children

Nobody else has a fucking clue as to how an abuser thinks, acts or behaves

katie I read the book when I was 18 and have re-read it many times, and what is pissing me off is that I would have argued all that you are saying a few years ago.

However

since moving further into feminism I am having trouble here

itma "Sakura The book doesn't "dehumanize(s) a young girl and humanize(s) a sex offender". The narrator tries to do this, the author shows us him
doing this and undermines it. The book is a critique of such thinking. Nabokov cannot be held responsible for the (possibly) deliberate mis-interpretation of his book by a reader.

You could argue that Nabokov shows us the deviousness and manipulative nature of Humbert Humbert - these are human characteristics seen in adults who abuse children. So, maybe it does 'humanize' him - but the word humanize doesn't necessarilly mean that you like the character. We are all human beings - doesn't means that we are all 'good', do 'good' things.The book does not condone his thinking, or his actions."

After going through all these analyses myself, after admiring Nabokov's poetic language and cleverness and blah blah I came to the conclusion (on this thread in fact) that there is an Elephant in the living room

The elehpant can only be seen when you are mired in a feminist perspective

I have read umpteen male critics gushing about how wonderful the book is

The elephant again

The only people who can judge this book as good or bad are women who were themselves abused as children

Nobody else has a fucking clue as to how an abuser thinks, acts or behaves

And yet we have all theses armchair experts lookin in as outsiders, guessing at the relevance of the characterization.

You are making children's pain into an academic excercise and I cannot stand it.

THe book was all about HUmbert, all about him as if the world needs even more information about men's inner worlds than we have already.

I think this book became a success because the subject is sexxxaaaaayyy

Keep going SGM it's a gradual unveiling but it does get there.

I was thinking about it for "perspective flip" rather than feminism, but I agree the female characters have a pretty bad time of it. On the other hand I disagree that any males get to go about their business as they want. It's shit for everyone. (GRRM hates his characters, it would seem)

The TV show makes a better job of pointing out (via the female children and their dreams for the future) how in that sort of society even a high-born woman was only really considered good for decoration and popping out heirs.