Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

523 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Nabokov's Lolita

There is no denying that the housewife, who can cook like a chef and look like a model, is an icon of the 1950s; most of the iconic women during this time were housewives. A famous example is Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo in I Love Lucy. The obsession with the housewife is even reflected in Nabokov’s Lolita which is set in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Through a conversation with Miss Pratt, the headmistress of Beardsley School for girls, Humbert Humbert frames the American education system as mere means preparing girls to be housewives. In the sexist American society, women are raised and educated, even at formal institutions, to be housewives.

In a mere two pages, the sexist past of women’s education is lain bare in a simple interview between a step-father and a school headmistress. Before the main dialogue even begins, Humbert recalls a teacher at Beardsley who revealed the main mission of the school when he said “girls are taught, as he put it with a foreigner’s love for such things: “not to spell very well, but to smell very well”” (Nabokov 177). This idiom, sadly, expr...

Show More
Related

  • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath: Tangled in Society's Expectations

    1617 Words  | 4 Pages

    A notable image that readers of the twentieth-century literature easily recognize is a bell jar. A bell jar is an unbreakable, stiff glass container that confines objects within its inescapable walls. It metaphorically represents the suffocating and an airless enclosure of conformism prevalent during the 1950’s American society. More specifically, American societal standards approve men to have the dominant role as they are encouraged to attend college in order to pursue professional careers. They are given the responsibility of financially supporting their families. In contrast, a women’s life in the 1950’s is centralized around family life and domestic duties only. They are encouraged to remain at home, raise children and care for their husbands. Women are perceived as highly dependent on their husbands and their ability to receive education is regarded as a low priority. Thus, the social conventions and expectations of women during the 1950’s displayed in The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath correlate to Esther Greenwood’s downward spiral of her mental state. Throughout the course of her journey, Esther becomes increasingly depressed because of her inability to conform to the gender roles of the women, which mainly revolved around marriage, maternity and domesticity.

    Read More

  • Similarities Between Sweat And The Yellow Wallpaper

    1256 Words  | 3 Pages

    The two works of literature nudging at the idea of women and their roles as domestic laborers were the works of Zora Neale Hurston in her short story “Sweat”, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Whatever the setting may be, whether it is the 1920’s with a woman putting her blood, sweat and tears into her job to provide for herself and her husband, or the 1890’s where a new mother is forced to stay at home and not express herself to her full potential, women have been forced into these boxes of what is and is not acceptable to do as a woman working or living at home. “Sweat” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” draw attention to suppressing a woman’s freedom to work along with suppressing a woman’s freedom to act upon her

    Read More

  • The Yellow Wallpaper and A Doll’s House

    916 Words  | 2 Pages

    In society, there has always been a gap between men and women. Women are generally expected to be homebodies, and seen as inferior to their husbands. The man is always correct, as he is more educated, and a woman must respect the man as they provide for the woman’s life. During the Victorian Era, women were very accommodating to fit the “house wife” stereotype. Women were to be a representation of love, purity and family; abandoning this stereotype would be seen as churlish living and a depredation of family status. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Henry Isben’s play A Doll's House depict women in the Victorian Era who were very much menial to their husbands. Nora Helmer, the protagonist in A Doll’s House and the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” both prove that living in complete inferiority to others is unhealthy as one must live for them self. However, attempts to obtain such desired freedom during the Victorian Era only end in complications.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles In Trifles And A Doll's House

    635 Words  | 2 Pages

    Society’s gender roles have been changing and evolving, though not necessarily a positive change. Women’s expected and defined role have changed and broken by women who refuses to follow their expected roles in society and decide to rebel against the norm. The pages of history have their own evidence of evolution of these female gender roles into the roles they are following now. Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” and Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” both contain a female protagonist and make us observe and understand how society in their period of time expects of them and their roles. Both these plays let us rethink and compare a female’s role in their period of time with our modern time through points and events that led them into realization of their roles and identity.

    Read More

  • A Doll's House A Raisin in the Sun

    3074 Words  | 7 Pages

    A Doll House, by Henrik Ibsen, and A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, both have central themes of search of self-identity within a social system. This is demonstrated by women characters from both plays breaking away from the social standards of their times and acting on their own terms. In most situations women are to be less dominant than men in society. These two plays are surprisingly different from the views of women in society and of the times and settings that they take place in.

    Read More

  • The Role Of Women In 'A Doll House And Simply Maria'

    1256 Words  | 3 Pages

    Women have been given by society certain set of duties, which although change through time, tend to stay relatively along the same lines of stereotypical women activities. In “A Doll House” and “Simply Maria” we see the perpetuation of these forms of behavior as an initial way of life for the two protagonists. Nonetheless we see a progression towards liberation and self discovery towards the development as a human being by breaking the rules of society. Such attitudes soon find opposing forces. those forces will put to the test the tenacity of these women and yield freedom and ownership for their lives which are owned by others at the start of their stories.

    Read More

  • The Story Of Lolita '

    660 Words  | 2 Pages

    Humbert Humbert, who had quite a fortunate childhood, falls in love with a girl by the name of Annabel Leigh. She and him started off as friends which eventually escalades into a sexual relationship but never consummate due to her death at age 13 from Typhus. This traumatizes Humbert Humbert and strangely triggers an attraction to young girls for the rest of his life. To accommodate his loneliness, he eventually marries a woman that has child-like characteristics so he can have somewhat of a normal life. After his uncle passes away, he has been left with an inheritance but only if he shows interest in his uncle’s business. When he presents this to his wife that he must travel to America, she confesses that she has been having an affair with another man, a taxi driver. He travels, lonesome, to America and joins the household of a widow, Charlotte Haze, and her twelve year-old daughter, Dolores Haze, whom which goes by the name of Lolita. Instantly, he realizes he has found the one, the one that will make Annabel become a person of the past and let him deliberately try to find a way to be with Lolita without her mother finding out. When Charlotte ships Lolita off to summer camp, she confronts Humbert Humbert, informing him of her feelings for him. She suggests that they either get married or he find another place to stay. Through panicked thoughts, he decides to marry Charlotte in order to stay near Lolita. When Charlotte discovers Humbert Humbert’s diary confessing his hatred towards Charlotte and his infatuation with her daughter, she runs out of the house, threatening to leave and expose him but instantly dies from being hit by a car. He arrives at Lolita’s summer camp to pick her up and spend the night at the Enchanted Hunter...

    Read More

  • Women as a Minority Group

    1272 Words  | 3 Pages

    Even after these prejudices were overcome, the education system still maintained sexism in both obvious and subtle ways. Books rein...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Sex And The Single Girl

    889 Words  | 2 Pages

    The 60’s was certainly a time of women’s curiosity and venture outside of the norm “homemaker” role. Women not only found pleasure in the world, but in themselves as a whole and as a woman. Sex and the Single Girl by Helen Gurley Brown played an important role here as her intent was to guide women - or more specifically the single woman - in her pursuit of independence and pleasure. Sex and the Single Girl most definitely lead the readers on to believe that it was to empower women; even to break away from the norm and advocate the unattached female. My response will focus on the contradictory nature the guidebook, and other literature like Cosmopolitan, create when advising a woman to do and be something on the one hand while having an underlying message on the other.

    Read More

  • Gender Roles In Mad Men

    2109 Words  | 5 Pages

    The 1960s provided a reality time of suppressed females and overindulgent males within the society spectrum. Yet the nostalgia aspect of this manifests in the idea of the perfect housewife and the graci...

    Read More

  • The Power Struggle in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita

    3964 Words  | 8 Pages

    According to literary theories and the theories of Fredrich Nietzsche, human beings have an unquenchable urge for power and will use "ethics," and everything else, in order to increase their authority. In Nabokov's Lolita, we see how Humbert controls Lolita in the beginning stages of their relationship but eventually finds himself going mad because of her deceitful ways and the control she has over his sexual desires.

    Read More

  • Nora's Decision to Leave in A Doll's House

    1431 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many women in modern society make life altering decisions on a daily basis. Women today have prestigious and powerful careers unlike in earlier eras. It is more common for women to be full time employees than homemakers. In 1879, when Henrik Ibsen wrote A Doll's House, there was great controversy over the out come of the play. Nora’s walking out on her husband and children was appalling to many audiences centuries ago. Divorce was unspoken, and a very uncommon occurrence. As years go by, society’s opinions on family situations change. No longer do women have a “housewife” reputation to live by and there are all types of family situations. After many years of emotional neglect, and overwhelming control, Nora finds herself leaving her family. Today, it could be said that Nora’s decision is very rational and well overdue.

    Read More

  • A Doll House Gender Analysis

    1348 Words  | 3 Pages

    Literature normally touches on traditional gender stereotypes and the role of the society in building those gender biases. From earlier centuries, gender stereotyping is closely intertwined with every aspect of the social fabric. The play, A Doll 's House by Henrik Ibsen presents a critical reflection of marital norms of the nineteenth-century. This three-act play revolves around the need of every individual, particularly women, to discover oneself, and how they have to strive to establish their identities. This aesthetically shaped play depicts traditional gender roles and the subsequent social struggles that every woman encounter in a stereotyped society. Though, Nora fits rightly to the nineteenth century social norm of submissive housewife

    Read More

  • Homemaking Shows Essay

    1828 Words  | 4 Pages

    These homemaking shows’ tactics were to encourage and show women that being a homemaker, wife, and mother is not a lonely life or a life full of drudgery and that having this status is not being an unproductive citizen. These shows had to incorporate these tactics because a decade before women’s role were vastly different to the roles they have now. Women before were working in jobs that were mainly solely for men, they were independent by earning their own wages, and being patriotic citizens by participating in the war effort by fighting on the home front or joining the military. Their work on both fronts were dangerous and life-threatening in which these jobs were predominantly for men; many were spies, others made bombs and weapons, and many flew planes and carried out dangerous missions. All of this changed during the postwar years in which their main occupations now were mothers and housewives. It may seem that women decreasing independence and their rigid gender and social mobility made them feel limited in

    Read More

  • The Problem With Feminism Is The Misunderstanding Of Its Definition

    729 Words  | 2 Pages

    As a graduate of the Grier School, an all girls boarding school, one constantly gets inquiries about the nature of her education. It begins with a gesture of respect to gauge how she will react to the questions everyone yearns to know the answer to. The most common question Grier graduates hear is, “what is it like to go to school without boys?” Graduates hastily defend their alma mater with praise and insight about its empowering and positive atmosphere. Most graduates do not mention boys in their answers. They rephrase the question to the one that no one asks: “What is it like to go to school with all girls?” Most people do not realize the significance in changing two words of a question until they are the ones answering. Grier’s education is not about excluding males; it is about an education. Yet, the question remains centered around the patriarchal dimension of society that insists women cannot function the same without the presence of men. Grier’s teaching of feminism was not from a textbook or class; it came from series of realizations from shared experiences.

    Read More

More about Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

Open Document