First level of criticism of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita: the relationship between Dolores Haze and Humbert Humbert is a "tragic love affair" and "one of the only love stories you'll ever read," a “bold, direct seduction” by a “demonic orphan” (thanks, New Yorker), and, of course, the classic Vanity Fair blurb featured on the cover of an edition published by Vintage: "the only convincing love story of our century."

Second-level criticism, typically found in tags on reblogs of Tumblr posts discussing the book: Dolly is an innocent child with zero sexual experience or interest, and has no idea that Humbert has any sexual interest in her, before he rapes her at the Enchanted Hunters hotel. (Many of these critics unthinkingly equate innocence or inculpability with sexual inexperience, and seem to suggest that her violation is the more tragic for her lack of sexual knowledge or interest in him.)

Very important thread in the text that many readers and critics on the second level seem to brush aside: the presence of Dolly's childhood sexuality, and the way it's intentionally misinterpreted, feasted upon, and twisted by Humbert toward his own ends. (First-level critics can of course be written off completely, or taken out back and shot, according to the reader’s preference.) (P.S. An example of zeroth-level criticism on Nabokov is this work of so-called academic analysis, which pissed me off so bad my eyes crossed.)

When we examine the text, it becomes clear that Dolly has had consensual sexual experiences typical of her age before meeting Humbert; develops a childish crush on her mother’s new boarder, which he both aggressively encourages and despicably takes advantage of; comes abruptly face-to-face with his adult sexuality in a way that disturbs and alarms her, but which she has little or no language to process or understand; retreats into the familiar cultural narrative of adult relationships that she's received from movies and magazines, and takes tiptoeing steps into the world of adolescent sexuality, to attempt to understand and explain to herself Humbert’s behavior; and finally understands the enormity of Humbert’s sexual demands of her, and the captivity in which she finds herself, through rape.

(N.B. We all understand that Humbert is an unreliable narrator blah blah fucking blah. Of course he puts his own spin on events and their interpretation, particularly the episode of the Charlotte Haze car crash, sometimes to the extent of a complete reversal on what the reader is meant to understand as happening. But, without any textual or symbolic evidence to the contrary, we have to assume that most physical actions actually happened the way he described. Otherwise we’ll just go further down the rabbit hole of “well maybe he or she or they never actually did that” “well maybe he’s making up the stop in Beardsley” “well maybe he’s making up the whole story in the asylum,” and so on. Let’s not get into THAT, thank you.)

The presence of Dolly’s childhood sexuality in the text is important to me because of the way it illustrates the extent of the damage Humbert has truly done to her. What he does is not a tragedy because he’s ruined some generic figment of childhood innocence (in fact, one of his greatest fetishes is in pretending that Dolly is that very cipher of fresh, unspoiled innocence, which he’s free to violate over and over as though starting from scratch, and he’s both discomfited and disgusted by any evidence that she’s a living person who accumulates life experiences and is damaged by what he’s done to her). It’s a tragedy because he takes a child’s growing, developing life away from her, and forces it into the path of his own gratification. A person doesn’t have to be a sexless blank slate for their sexual assault to be a violation and a tragedy, and sometimes the victim’s preexisting sexuality is used against them in a way that’s even more painful.

All page numbers are from the Library of America hardback edition of Nabokov’s Novels 1955-1962.

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