Humbert the Lyrical Girlizer & Ultimate Misogynist
In Part I of Lolita, I was most struck by Humbert Humbert’s multi-faceted psychological perception of himself. I focused my previous post around Humbert the Adam figure vs. Humbert the Devil figure, and in class we discussed a number of his other manifestations. Since entering into Part II of Lolita, a new archetype has occurred to me: Humbert Humbert as the Ultimate Misogynist. Indeed, he is the only literary character I have ever come across that literally hates every female character, and presumably all others in the novel’s world. Furthermore, I see this version of H.H. as a direct product of another: Humbert Humbert the Lyrical Woman Girlizer. In other words, H.H.’s hatred of women, the utter antitheses of nymphets, is the only appropriate outcome of his singular love for the latter.
Milan Kundera, in his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, coins new meanings for the terms ‘epic’ and ‘lyrical’ in regards to the two exclusive types of womanizer that exists. The former refers to a man who desires to be with as many different kinds of women as possible in order to satisfy his curiosity for knowledge (perhaps a reflection of Ars Erotica?), or as Kundera’s narrator says, “to possess the endless variety of the objective female world” (216). The latter, on the other hand, the lyrical womanizer, describes a man who desperately seeks his ideal woman, or, “[his] own subjective and unchanging dream of a woman” and as a result ends up with the same type of women over and over again (216). But there is one more quality of the lyrical womanizer that is important to note as it reflects one of the most fundamental characteristics of H.H.’s psychology. Because ideals represent attributes that are inherently hypothetical, as in, a perfectness attainable in theory but not in reality, H.H., like all lyrical woman–/girl–izers, is doomed for his desires to be disappointed.
On the very first page of his story, H.H. introduces his audience to the concept of “a certain initial girl-child,” but he does not give a name to her until two pages later (9). This neglect is significant in relation to the idea of Humbert the Lyrical because it reflects H.H.’s tendency to pinpoint the essence of an individual (or what he perceives it to be), which more readily allows him to transpose his preferences upon other (subsequent) girl-children, rather than present the individual, in this case Annabel, herself.
Indeed, we understand early on that to H.H. Lolita is the perfection of the prototype that was Annabel. And yet, is Lolita truly perfect in H.H.’s eyes? Can she be perfect if she doesn’t actually exist? After all, she is a projection by H.H. upon Dolores Haze, even he admits that: “I broke her spell by incarnating [Annabel] in another” (15). And still, might she be incidental, despite all of H.H.’s acute leanings towards the notion Fate? He certainly convinces himself, and probably a vast readership, that Lolita is in fact the “light of [his] life” (9). But considering Kundera’s framework for the lyrical womanizer, H.H.’s dissatisfactions with Lolita as the girl she is versus the girl he wants her to be (convinces himself she is) definitely overshadows the remarkable language he employs in feigning genuine love for her. In other words, H.H.’s “fancy prose” is just that, and not necessarily anything more (9). Therefore, the cultivated aspect of his disclosures begs two questions: whether his love is not similarly crafted, and whether such a construction of love could truly be satiating to Humbert Humbert, simultaneously parched and slobbering.
If we take for granted the impossibility for H.H. to be contented by love due to his lyrical approach to it, the ramification of his inevitable disappointment is the pure, unwavering hatred of adult females, post-nymphet or not. Thus comes Humbert the Ultimate Misogynist. Throughout the novel, H.H. cannot refrain from referring to all of the adult female characters with some kind of hateful, condescending, or just plain mean description. Often he will compare them to large, lumbering animals, like a cow, or else ugly, nasty birds. I was fascinated by how consistent these analogies were, and yet I’m unsure of any symbolic literary conventions they may satisfy. Regardless, whether he is discrediting the nature of the woman, or the nature of her hair, H.H. reveals constant, impenetrable disapproval of the entire adult female race and thus is the perfect and ultimate misogynist.
Tags: Humbert Humbert, Lolita, Milan Kundera, misogyny, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Vladimir Nabokov, womanizers
