TW FOR CSA
I picked up Nabokov’s Lolita knowing it would be particularly triggering for me but I was drawn in anyways because I was curious about how H. H. would spin this story from the abuser’s POV.
A lot of people perceive Lolita as an attempt to garner sympathy for a pedophile but I really don’t see that at all. To me, H. H.’s psyche is exactly how I always imagined my own abuser’s to be. The way he dejectedly describes Dolores rejecting him and how she’s this ungrateful little brat and poor him, is so accurate to how self pitying abusers are in real life. How he tries to draw up this narrative that he really loves Dolores and goes to all these great lengths for her and why doesn’t she love him back?…or when he insinuates that she was flirty and initiated it all. I’ve never seen a portrayal of the mind of an abuser that resonated so deeply with my own experiences. It was weirdly validating as a survivor to read this and know that I didn’t misinterpret those self pitying sighs and repulsive “woe is me” comments…they were indeed carefully crafted attempts to guilt and manipulate and self-victimize. Even the paranoia he experiences for everything around him is spot on!
H. H. never truly loved Dolores because he really couldn’t even see her as human and in my opinion this book does a great job at conveying the great lengths people like that will go to to lie to themselves and the world. As long as you don’t let him fool you…this is exactly how an abuser’s mind works and I appreciate Nabokov for writing it out this way and materializing the thoughts I always knew my abuser had. Of course I know other survivors might not perceive it this way.
by No_Broccoli2843
38 Comments
Imo most people who rag on the book for “sympathizing with a pedophile” haven’t read it. It sympathizes with a pedo about as much as American Psycho sympathizes with a psychopathic murderer. You can write a character who’s a horrible human being and delve into how their mind works without glorifying or normalizing it, in fact I think it’s very important and helpful to a lot of people.
> A lot of people perceive Lolita as an attempt to garner sympathy for a pedophile but I really don’t see that at all.
Though I acknowledge that every literary work meets with a breadth of responses, and am inclined in virtually all cases to give the benefit of the doubt, I’m happy to say that those are some of the stupidest people still capable of reading.
I wouldn’t claim to understand your perspective in full – and of course, as you say too, I wouldn’t expect everyone to perceive the novel in the same way – but I’ve always thought that Nabokov is particularly strong on self-delusion and how harmful it can be.
>A lot of people perceive Lolita as an attempt to garner sympathy for a pedophile
and those people lack reading comprehension
I’ve read Lolita for the first time recently and loved every bit of it. In my perception there was not a single grain of pedophile sympathy in there, reading between the lines that book really highlights the petty and disgraceful behaviour of Humbert. Glad it provided some sort of validation for you!
As a side note, for as much as there is to dislike about Nabokov in real life. I absolutely love his persistence in letting us know that it’s just a story, nothing more, nothing less. To me this requires the reader to make their own sense of the book, and so many people coming to the conclusion that Humbert is supposedly a good guy to me is just blatantly telling on yourself.
If you want to read something a bit more lighthearted (and funny imo) from Nabokov, I enjoyed ‘despair’ as well.
People who think lolita is a book that tries to garner sympathy for a pedophile have neither critical thinking skills or media literacy
If anyone actually thinks Lolita is sympathetic to a predator then they have either not read the book, or are so stupid that the only thing they should be reading is the back of a box of Frosted Flakes.
* Fact: it’s based on a real life story (tho the author never admitted it, it has too many similarities and even blatant references to the real case) [This](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/37959891) is the book on the real case.
I’m glad it was healing for you and you’re in a safer place now. People misinterpret ‘triggers’ as censorship or whatever, when actually being aware of our triggers and exploring them in a safe way can be so powerful. Lolita is beautifully written and taught me so much about literature and motifs and wordplay, but it also skilfully illustrates the depravity and narcissistic self-justification of abusers, without actually being prurient. Totally understand why some people would find it hard but I’m glad it’s still being read and appreciated by those who are able
It did garner sympathy for a pedophile from me. That’s kinda it’s central theme. Humbert via his narration is charming, witty, droll, insightful and romantic. He pulls you in to like him and want to hear his story. That is why it’s jarring when you realise what he is doing with a child. There are a few moments that stopped me in my tracks and realise that despite myself I again was kinda liking him and ignoring his awful, destructive crimes.
The book is never more pertinent than right now with metoo. It would have been easy and much more morally correct to write HH as dirty creeper we could all get aboard as not liking. But how much more of a lesson is it for us to like humbert, in the way we loved charming Bill Cosby, and and yet know what he does.
To learn the lesson that you can be utterly charmed by a leech even when knowing how horrible they are is what makes the book so disconcerting. It’s a really freaky book that kinda haunts your soul for that reason. None of it is straight forward. If only he wasn’t a brilliant, inventive funny wordsmith I could hate him easier! But that prose…aaaahhh. Sympathy for the Devil jagger sings.
I think you walked away from the book with exactly the right reading. Nabokov may have written it to work through his own CSA trauma and it’s definitely written to condemn HH and show how he can use his education and social power (relative to both the child he is abusing, and the reader he’s talking to) in order to twist reality.
You might be interested in the Lolita Podcast: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-lolita-podcast-73899842/
It talks about the original, actual text and then how the book has been used and (mostly) misused in media since then.
I absolutely adore this book, and likewise found it so odd how in the collective mind the essence of this book is completely twisted.
There is a deeply researched podcast called “The Lolita Podacast” where the creator does a deep dive not only into the book itself, but dissects why the book has been misinterpreted, what it says about us as a society, and most importantly, the consequences that the adaptations have had and the damage it has done.
I highly recommend it if you’d like to go down the rabbithole of this marvellous book.
Thank you for sharing
The song Polly, by Nirvana was like this. Cobain said despite sympathizing with the rape victim it would have been absurd to sing about how she felt in a pop son, instead show the warped reality the rapist created for themselves. There is something both human and extra gross about it, but either way it’s powerful and makes better art.
I’m struggling a lot with this because my area is embroiled in a book ban controversy. Locals want to remove all suggestion of sex from library books that children have access to. My problem is, as a survivor of CSA, if I’d had some of these kinds of books around, I’d have had a way to say in words what happened to me. I didn’t have the words for over 20 years.
Media is vital in helping humans navigate their lives and situations. We learn from the example of others, and in situations like ours, it helps to have good models of coping with a situation out of our control. ESPECIALLY as a child.
Finally.
I struggled hard with reading it because I didn’t want to understand H.H’s mentality or feelings. To me it reeked of what my abuser *might* have felt and I have no wish to understand.
I can read through books and series so fast, but when I say it took me over a month to read Lolita I absolutely mean it. It was a *struggle*.
It’s by far one of the most misunderstood and demonised books because people make assumptions and won’t read it.
It’s a fantastic book.
I’m glad it was validating for you.
Thank you for sharing your perspective, and I’m sorry to hear about the abuse you suffered in the past. I think the Nabokov clearly did NOT want us to take H.H.’s side. We have to look through H.H.’s skewed perspective to catch a glimpse of the real story. However, though the book is ultimately in sympathy with Lolita, I wondered if it might still be insensitive because, like H.H., the author is in love with language and literary art. In the end, H.H. is writing his account to make Lolita an object of art, to place her with “aurochs and angels” in a memorable phrase from the end of the book. In a way, Nabokov is doing the same. He is using a tragic story of a girl’s abduction and abuse not only to explore psychology but to create a sophisticated work of literary art. He may despise H.H. but he has created H.H. and in a way he is H.H. Although Nabokov is so smart that perhaps this is a misreading which he already foresaw and I have missed some crucial element that undoes this interpretation.
The Lolita podcast is really good as a companion to reading the book. I also read “my dark Vanessa” right after Lolita and while it’s not light reading, it really took my breathe away. It describes so well the way these relationships can affect someone long term. Fantastically written.
The people that hate on Lolita and other books with negative topics and characters that are just bad people are so annoying. They don’t seem to realise that removing all negative topics from media is just pretending it doesn’t exist, which helps exactly no one and does absolutely nothing.
I haven’t read Lolita yet, but I plan to buy it soon. I have however, read two books about child sexual abuse. One was My Dark Vanessa, the other was Tampa. My Dark Vanessa is in the POV of the victim, so a bit different, but it was so emotional and impactful. I still think about it despite reading it ages ago.
Tampa is in the POV of a female pedophile, it’s horrible and graphic, and just a disgusting book overall, which is why it’s good. You see how Celeste sees these *children*, and you feel absolutely disgusted. She isn’t a good person, and anyone with any literacy can see that, the book isn’t about justifying her actions, it’s about seeing them in another, equally as horrific, viewpoint. I’d imagine Lolita is similar.
It’s very impactful to read books from the POV of bad people, I think.
I don’t know if it’s true, but apparently, Nabokov was also a survivor. If that’s the case, maybe he wrote it as a way to deal with his own trauma
Nabokov himself was really conflicted about publishing the book because he was worried people wouldn’t get what he was trying to do with the narrative and think he was a pedophile. He threw the manuscript in the fireplace at one point and it was his wife who rescued it and she was the driving force in convincing him to finish it and publish it.
I think people that feel sympathy for the guy are pretty influenced by the movie adaptation, that movie ick me like crazy. Some people read the book after watching the movie, so 😐
I felt the same way growing up. The book was helpful for me and understanding that it wasn’t my fault.
The pedophile sympathizing really comes from other media.
Amazing book by one of the most gifted writers. You know it’s awesome when it’s so violently hated by those who didn’t read it.
I love that you felt that way. I think this is what Nabokov intended. If you haven’t yet listened to the Lolita podcast I highly recommend it (she gives warnings at the beginnings of episodes that might be especially triggering)
This is why Lolita is one of my favorite books. Not for the subject material or because I sympathize with H.H. but because Nabokov does an absolutely stellar job of portraying H.H. and his utter delusion. I’m pretty Nabokov said himself that H.H. is despicable and an unreliable narrator. As a survivor of SA myself, it’s pretty validating.
I think that is the message of the book 100%. I can see why people might find the book upsetting because of it’s content, but I defintiely don’t think the message is meant to be anything but the one you have highlighted.
People might feel more satisified if he’d been written less “sympathetically” but I think it would have made it less true. The guy is a piece of shit, but in his own mind he is a victim and that helps him validate his behaviour.
My condolences OP
I think a lot of people, whether they have or haven’t read the book, don’t realize that the movie adaptations – or similar movies like American Beauty – portray the pedophile as a sympathetic and well-intentioned lover (or even the victim) of a knowing and willing “nymph” enjoying her power over a man.
As such, they either never read the book and assume that’s what it’s about, or they read it through the filter of what they saw in a relevant movie or what they’ve heard reputation-wise and don’t grasp what’s actually going on.
IIRC, Nabokov was moved to write the book after a real life case where a pedophile pretending to be a cop caught a girl shoplifting. He persuaded her to go with him to help catch other shoplifters to avoid being punished, and he abducted her for a few weeks or months.
When she was finally returned and the crime/trial were news, Nabokov noticed the two main focuses of the media and public:
* how she “deserved” it by being a “bad girl” committing a crime
* mockery of her being overweight
From a “well actually” POV, the book isn’t “about” pedophilia, but uses it to demonstrate what it’s *really* about: how people confuse beauty and ugly with good and bad / right and wrong.
HH isn’t the stereotypical pedophile – he’s not a creepy fat guy with a bald spot and greasy clothes hiding in back alleys with a dirty mouth. He’s portrayed (admittedly from his own POV) as a charming, sophisticated, and handsome man that women swoon over because he’s mannered and educated and speaks with an accent.
And the language the book uses to describe the “relationship” is purposefully based on popular romance novels, soap operas, and Romeo and Juliet.
The point being that, with a charming predator and beautiful language, the book is showing how the reader can be seduced into accepting the story of a stepfather abducting his stepdaughter and subjecting her to a year of non-stop rape as a “tragic love story”.
It’s actually a bit disturbing how willing Hollywood is to adapt the book or similar storylines the way they do. It’s a bit understandable – Lolita is, IIRC, 12-13 years old for much of the book, and no casting option with that is tenable – a 21 or even 18 year old isn’t going to make a “realistic” 12 year old, an actual underaged actor would be highly gross for most audiences to knowingly watch participate in the book’s scenes, and regardless of the actor, it’s still ostensibly a 12 year old character being depicted.
Similarly, it’s likely a less compelling movie if the protagonist is a “true” pedophile rather than a tragic lover. I get that.
But regardless, it has helped build a narrative that pedophile love can be a sympathetic romance where the man (older partner) is innocent of abusing or exploiting the girl (younger partner) – or at least that the victim has at least some of the guilt and responsibility for “seducing” their abuser.
I’m a survivor too and I strongly agree with your assessment. In HH’s narration, Nabokov perfectly captures the self-hating narcissism that all abusers share. HH does not perceive Dolores as a human being but rather an outward vessel to collect his internalized sexual and social grievances. I think the criticism that HH is treated sympathetically is completely off-base and reflects some readers’ discomfort with the language HH uses to justify his pedophilia–the same self-soothing language that we all use to comfort ourselves when we face hardship. It *should* feel disgusting.
If you know you know, and if you don’t know, you can’t possibly imagine.
Thank you for sharing. It was beautifully written. I agree and though I read it before my stalker, I can see those parallels in victim-hood from the abusers perspective. It was always about how I wronged him, he needed closure, how dare I ruin his life (by telling him to leave me alone lmfao). It’s meant to be an uncomfortable book and the unreliable narrator is an important concept. It’s the distortions of their reality
> The way he dejectedly describes Dolores rejecting him and how she’s this ungrateful little brat and poor him, is so accurate to how self pitying abusers are in real life. How he tries to draw up this narrative that he really loves Dolores and goes to all these great lengths for her and why doesn’t she love him back?
I have not read the book, but this rings exactly true for me with my abuser of several years when I was young. He would build up to this crescendo of self-pity and guilting me into returning his affections. In retrospect it is horrifying, but at the time I understood it to be my fault.
Really frustrating that this aspect of abuse is one that is almost never communicated to children. The emotional blackmail, the gaslighting and the claims of abuse from the abusee are critical to many of the forms of manipulation that kids should be hyper-vigilant for.
I’m continually surprised by how many people have read this book. I couldn’t get more than a few chapters in because I just found the main character so insufferable. I know that’s the whole point, but it is physically difficult to read. I couldn’t put myself through it.
Thank you, very cool to hear that a survivor of monsters like HH perceives the book the same way that I do.
This is a top three book for me. Two writerly challenges going on concurrently:
1. The unreliable narrator
2. The evil protagonist disguised as a sympathetic character.
Either one is incredibly difficult to pull off on its own; Nabokov achieves both perfectly, and in his 3rd best language.
When you reread the book, you realize that virtually every word written by the narrator is a self-serving lie. The truth is only available between the lines.
Just about perfect.
Those were the messages I got from the book and I really liked it. The colloquial usage of the word “Lolita” coupled with a fairly problematic Kubrick movie I think more contributes to the culture of “coquettish jailbait” rather than “groomed 11 year old”.
I’d also recommend Reading Lolita in Tehran which compares the plight of Iranian women to Delores, along with chronicling their attempts to continue a book club once they were pushed out of university.
>A lot of people perceive Lolita as an attempt to garner sympathy for a pedophile but I really don’t see that at all.
Anyone who reads that book and thinks it is trying to gain sympathy or justify anything did NOT take the correct message from it.
Yes. “Lolita” is simply showing the truth. It’s a mirror to a psyche, not an ode to it.
HH garners sympathy from others by being charming, articulate and funny. But the story starts in a courtroom, and we have his inner narration on full display: the self-pity, the excuses, the attempt to present monstrous acts in a romantic light. It’s all there.
I think part of the issue is that people aren’t very good at recognizing unreliable narrators. First-person narration may also be playing a part: it’s very intimate, and I can see how the idea of riding in an acting pedophile’s head might make people uncomfortable. But concluding that the book justifies HH is silly.