The Confessor’s Dilemma

While reading Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita my first instinct was to identify Foucault’s four strategic unities.  A simple task, as it turned out, for this beautifully written text couldn’t have set up the four unities more clearly: the hysterical woman (Charlotte), the masturbating child (Dolly), the Malthusian couple (Humbert & Charlotte), and the perverse adult (Humbert Humbert).  Easy.

Once I drew these comparisons, though, and as I continued to read Lolita I became much more interested in our narrator’s voice and thoughts.  His account of the events reminded me very much of some of the historical documents we have read in Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality, primarily “Navy Drummer Philip C. Buskirk’s Private Journal, 1852-1853” and most recently “Young Women Discuss Petting, 1930”.  Free will is prominent in both of these articles.  Buskirk’s entry is self-deprecating, he “abhors [himself]”, because what he deems morally right is in opposition to what his body is doing with or without his consent, i.e. he almost has a wet dream (Peiss, 118).  Similarly, many women in “Young Women Discuss Petting” seek guidance because they don’t know if what their parents and traditional society has taught them or what some of their more promiscuous peers are involved in regarding sex is more right.  Furthermore, they struggle to defend their decisions either way.  One woman remarks that she would do as her friends but, “thank goodness, there is something that seems to hold me back” (340).  Her free will to choose, but also what she has been taught about right and wrong regarding sex via scientia sexualis is what holds her back from smoking and petting.

Humbert Humbert, our humble narrator in Lolita, also has his fair share of struggles as he writes about his encounters with Dolores Haze.  Humbert has his own battles with societal construction, which is clear anytime he describes a moment when he was able to touch Lo for his own pleasure, but disguised under a seemingly innocuous action, like rubbing her bruised leg.  Humbert goes so far as to go under the guise of marriage, under the title of “father” to be closer to Lo, to touch her and coddle her without it seeming strange.  Though he is very careful and quick to point out that she was left “alive, unraped” even after he got to have his little bit of pleasure (Nabokov, 66).  Thus, he is very conscious of the way that society is perceiving his actions–of course, this entire book is his confession to a jury, so perhaps these little self-defenses are inserted to appeal to his innocence.  Regardless, I’m more interested in Humbert’s struggle with his free will in relation to the historical documents mentioned above.  I feel that unlike the documents, whose authors question themselves, Humbert is defensive of his actions and much more embittered toward a society that does not allow his kind of “perverse adult” roam freely.  In Chapter 20, he actually makes a plee for the sex offender: “Emphatically, no killers are we” (88).

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 4th, 2010 at 8:18 pm and is filed under Foucault: History of Sexuality, Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality, Mila Matveeva, Nabokov: Lolita. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.