Gender and Power in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita

In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, the overriding force of the narrator, Humbert Humbert, is his need to prove himself master of everything: other people, his own desires, fate, and language itself. Time and time again through Lolita we see Humbert’s most extreme actions and emotions not as a result of his physical desires but rather his psychological need to win, to possess, and to control. Gender relations are quite simple for him: women are to be possessed, and men should compete for the possession of women. At times Humbert competes to prove his superiority in other ways, for instance tricking psychologists into thinking he is gay. And he even refers to his own ‘exotic’ sexuality as evidence of extremely refined taste, a palate superior to the average man’s. By the end of the book we see that Humbert’s hunger for domination overpowers the peculiar particularities of his desires and is the real cause of his woes.

Humbert wastes no time letting us know of his potency: “I was, and still am, despite mes malheurs, an exceptionally handsome male… I could attain any adult female I chose” (25). He reminds us of this fact numerous times. He uses it to explain how he is able to beat the competition by seducing any woman he wants, though he may want them for unconventional reasons. He marries Valeria for unconventional reasons: “It occurred to me that…all the conventions of marriage…might help me, if not to purge myself of my degrading and dangerous desires, at least to keep them under pacific control” (24). He chooses her in particular because of “the imitation she gave of a little girl” (25). And he shortly admits that she grew older, fatter, hairier, and he stopped having sex with her—there is no doubting his lack of respect. Two pages are spent mocking Valeria and their attempt at marriage before he explodes in fury at the fact that she is having an affair and wants a divorce. He even addresses the peculiar reasoning of his anger:

“A mounting fury was suffocating me—not because I had any particular fondness for that figure of fun, Mme Humbert, but because matters of legal and illegal conjunction were for me alone to decide, and here she was, Valeria, the comedy wife, brazenly preparing to dispose in her own way of my comfort and fate. I demanded her lover’s name.” p.28

From this passage we may discern two reasons for Humbert’s anger: first, that a woman, whom he believed to be in his possession and control, could by her own independent actions so tremendously impact his “comfort and fate,” and second, that another man should so easily intrude on his territory. In essence, he is furious because he has been beaten by both of them and made to look ridiculous through his ignorance. It does not sit well with his self image, and he cannot let this state of affairs last: “But no matter. I had my revenge in due time” (30). And then we hear this bizarre, wonderful story about how the desperately destitute pair were forced to live in a science experiment on “human and racial reactions to a diet of bananas and dates in a constant position on all fours” (30) and how Valeria died in childbirth. Regardless of whether you believe this story (the results of the experiment have conveniently remained unpublished and I am skeptical as to Humbert’s ability to randomly find this out from “a man from Pasadena”), it settles the affair for Humbert—what better revenge can there be than the most bizarre, hilarious, degrading four years of torture one can possibly imagine?1 Humbert is able to move on (segueing quickly into the first reference to Quilty and the move to America) only because he knows he has beaten the competition to a bloody pulp.

Charlotte Haze enters the scene after Valeria. Rather, several years, several mental institutions, a trip to the North Pole and one coincidental house fire after Valeria, but Humbert by no means dwells on these events. Anyhow, Charlotte is clearly used by Humbert as a means of getting to Lolita: “I imagined…all the casual caresses her mother’s husband would be able to lavish on his Lolita…all my troubles would be expelled, I would be a healthy man” (70). And when he realizes this would be impossible because of her plans to send the girl to boarding school, he begins somewhat passively planning her murder. He can’t pull it off, but he realizes that controlling Charlotte would bring him one step closer to Lolita. And it is the mere fact that he cannot control Charlotte that he finds almost as damaging as her plans to export the girl. He notes that with Valeria, “I could make her change her mind instantly; but anything of the sort in regard to Charlotte was unthinkable. Bland American Charlotte frightened me. My lighthearted dream of controlling her through her passion for me was all wrong” (83). The fact that she is out of his control frightens him! When he does bring her to her knees in submission,2 he says the “little incident filled me with considerable elation” (91). Clearly his ability to manipulate Charlotte is an absolute requisite of the relationship.

The other noteworthy episode before he leaves Ramsdale is with John and Jean Farlow. The Farlows are the closest to friends that Humbert makes in the novel, and they are the only Americans described in detail without much ridicule. John Farlow is a capable, intelligent man who is quiet by definition: “quiet, quietly athletic, quietly successful” (78). His wife Jean is clearly quite attractive (though not to Humbert, of course), and she is the only character, out of many in the novel who produce art of various kinds, whose work Humbert praises.3 But even though he seems to respect the Farlows, he declares his sexual superiority. The most comically notable example of this occurs shortly after Charlotte’s death, when he associates their earnest and empathetic concern with sexual weakness:

“’Look’, he continued, ‘why don’t I drive there right now, and you may sleep with Jean’—(he did not really add that but Jean supported his offer so passionately that it might be implied).” p. 100

This little aside has almost nothing to do with the plot of the novel. It is merely Humbert asserting that for one thing, his virile persuasions are felt by even the most respectable women with stable marriages and healthy sex lives,4 and for another, that John Farlow’s quiet and generous nature is a sign of his submission to the more sexually powerful Humbert. Humbert wants us to know both of these because it is important to him to be the alpha male, to know that he can possess the woman and defeat the man. Whether or not this is the case (though it seems to be, given Jean’s attempt at a passionate kiss), we have heard it before, so this episode strikes of Humbert gloating.

The problem with the Farlows which necessitates Humbert’s escape from Ramsdale is that they cannot be controlled:

“But as I stood wide-eyed and flushed before the mirror, John Farlow tenderly tapped to inquire if I was okay—and I immediately realized it would be madness on my part to have her in the house with all those busybodies milling around and scheming to take her away from me. Indeed, unpredictable Lo herself might—who knows?—show some foolish distrust of me, a sudden repugnance, vague fear and the like, and gone would be the magic prize at the very instant of triumph.” p. 102

Humbert knows that the Farlows are genuinely interested in people’s well-being, unlike almost all the other characters with their selfish desires. Therefore he cannot control them, and just as with “Bland American Charlotte,” this frightens him. He knows that given independent support system, Lolita cannot be controlled, so he has to leave.

In the simplest terms, Lolita can be described as the two-part story of Humbert Humbert’s relationship with the girl. In Part I he takes her, and in Part II he loses her. Notice that this has nothing to do with Humbert’s sins, his physical needs, his personal history, or his reflection upon his life. Those are all just necessary components to the story of how he happens to desire and obtain a nymphet and subsequently how she escapes his grasp. Part I ends with a chilling exposition of Lolita’s situation: “In the middle of the night she came sobbing into [my room], and we made it up very gently. You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go” (142). This is the climax of Humbert’s possession of Lolita: she has no other option but him, and has not begun to realize the power (slavery, he himself calls it) that she holds over him. But of course she quickly grows to hate Humbert even while he revels in his possession of the nymphet.

The defining factor of Humbert’s sexual relations with Lolita is not the sex. He makes no attempt to deny enjoying the sex and having certain techniques, positions, and habits he enjoys especially, but each sexual encounter is foremost described in terms of the power dynamic. One scene that sticks out as the most ‘friendly’ is of the pair having sex while Lolita reads the comics, and Humbert admits to casually appreciating them as well. But then there is this horrific episode:

“[Dr. Tristramson] dignosed bronchitis, patted Lo on the back (all its bloom erect because of the fever) and put her to bed for a week or longer. At first she “ran a temperature” in American parlance, and I could not resist the exquisite caloricity of unexpected delights—Venus febriculosa—though it was a very languid Lolita that moaned and coughed and shivered in my embrace.” p. 198