"A super-cute Lolita look"

[IWouldNotCouldNotWithAGoat]

here

Am I being prudish? Wear sandals with socks for a super-cute Lolita look? This is aimed at teenage girls!! Am I over-reacting or is this just wrong?

It's a New Zealand shop, BTW.

wolfhound this is a feminist analysis of Nabokov's Lolita.

It's incredibly relevant whether or not the book helped or harmed women/girls

Just because it's irrelevant to the patriarchal critics doesn't mean it's irrelevant

"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."

I didn't know that Beachcomber, but it shows in his art. Dostoyevski was an artist, and way ahead of his time. It is still contemporary as you say. And the female characters were well-rounded. Also a very strong critique of prostitution, which was also portrayed as a choiceless choice

Can't believe Nabokov is being discussed alongside Dostoyevski tbh. Dittany is spot on, the book was created for titillation and there are all these women tying themselves in knots trying their damndest not to see it

Sorry, that is my fault - I brought Dostoevsky into the discussion!

I should have been clearer about why.

It is because I think that the people who think Lolita is a great/classic do so because they attribute things to the book that Dostoevsky very successfully did with C and P. I mean in terms of psychological exploration and characterization.

I think also I'm thinking about them together because Nabokov was famously very critical of Dostoevsky, calling him 'mediocre'. He was very disparaging of C and P.

On the firing squad thing;

"In 1848 Dostoyevsky joined a group of young intellectuals, led by Mikhail Petrashevsky, which met to discuss literary and political issues. In the reactionary political climate of mid-nineteenth-century Russia, such groups were illegal, and in 1849 the members of the so-called Petrashevsky Circle were arrested and charged with subversion. Dostoyevsky and several of his associates were imprisoned and sentenced to death. As they were facing the firing squad, an imperial messenger arrived with the announcement that the Czar had commuted the death sentences to hard labor in Siberia. This scene was to haunt the novelist the rest of his life."

I do think that the suffering he went through here and afterwards in the prison camp show immensely in his work.

Nabokov, on the other hand, comes across as terribly arrogant and pompous with a worrying insight into a paedophile's mind.

'a worrying insight into a paedophile's mind'.

maybe.

but when i was 12/13/ i wrote a lengthy story about personal heroin addiction and 'diarised' a withdrawal struggle in a family setting. it included graphic descriptions of heroin use etc, with plenty of emotional and medically accurate detail. it had started off as a school project on drug awareness, so i merrily handed the story in as my 'drugs project' for marking.

a week or so later i found myself at the centre of an investigation and had to be interviewed at length by several different people to find out if i or any of my family members/ friends were at risk, because it felt that my writing crossed the boundary between researchable fact and lived experience. i think my parents were also contacted. eventually they believed me. and after that the school used my story in the drug awareness classes.

i've never so much as had a drag of a cigarette in my life, nor witnessed any drug use save a couple of stoned students at a party.

in the same way that nabokov gives a 'worrying insight' in to a paedophile's mind, i apparently had inadvertently given a worrying insight into the life of an addict and their family (by getting a few books out of the library and doing a bit of research). it doesn't make me any more an addict than it makes nabokov a paedophile. it doesn't even make me a potential addict.

both heroin addiction and paedophilia are pretty similarly stigmatised, but thinking of how heroin chic also became co-opted by popular culture, it's interesting how some things do become 'sexy'...

that said, i find the comparison between nabokov and dostoevsky fascinating. i hadn't realised that nabokov's father had been assassinated either, so at some point i'm going to have to dig out a biography. largely still believe in all the 'death of the author' stuff though, so more for interest.

Madwoman, you've taken that quote out of context. We already agreed upthread that you don't have to experience something in order to empathize or understand. Al you are arguing here is that Nabokov might not be a paedophile. Fine. But that's hardly the crux of the feminist arguments on this thread! Even if he isn't, he was certainly playing to the peanut gallery and the male critics who lauded the book never once contemplated the silencing of the victim: that was never discussed in a serious way. At all. Critics brushed off the rapes and mostly gave light-hearted reviews, praising his use of language and so forth.

It is hard coming to terms with the fact that there's nothing a patriarchy likes more than a lacivious middle aged man having his way with a young girl and dressing it up as art.

The thing is though madwomanintheattic that if you had a worrying insight into heroin addiction, it would have been your addiction or that of someone who was 'doing' herion addiction to themselves. Of course, drug addiction affects others, not just the addict.

Addiction is just not in the same league as raping a 12 year old however.

both heroin addiction and paedophilia are pretty similarly stigmatised,

Heroine addiction might be stigmatized: the dirty feckless addict, but heroine dealers aren't. And that is patriarchy for you, because the dealers are mostly men.

I would say heroin dealing and child molestation are seen as roughly the same by society i.e they're not as stigmatized as they should be.

Child abuse victims were very much ostracized until recently, just like heroin addicts. They were treated terribly by the authorities in order to protect the family member who abused them.

Under the 'Lolita' youtube entries comments talk about the book that was about a little girl that seduces a man. That's what damage the book has done, in a nutshell.

I'm finding myself a bit troubled at the thought of Lolita as a set text for youngish students - as it's likely to be rather triggery/upsetting for abuse survivors to have to consider the issue from the perpetrator's perspective.