Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

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Recommended: realism and romanticism

If someone asked the average American, “What genre was Vladimir Nabokov's hit novel, Lolita?”, what would they say? What would be their justification? Although Lolita includes drugging, pedophilia, incest, and murder, many Americans would say that the novel would be classified as romantic. Out of all of the fitting genres such as drama, an expose, or even a parody, Americans tend to go outside of this box and claim that Lolita is a romantic novel or a love story. Aside from that, why would Americans even jump to that conclusion? Do they just go off of what people tell them about the novel, or is there an underlying reason? It is entirely possible that Americans romanticize Lolita and ignore her kidnapping and rape because Americans tend to blame rape victims and sympathize with their rapists.
“Lolita. Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.” (Nabokov 9). Lolita is a story written in the 1950's by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov in which the narrator, Humbert Humbert, falls in love with a 12 year old girl.
The story starts with a murder confession, and goes on to when Humbert first moves into the home of Charlotte Haze. He immediately falls in love with her twelve year old daughter Dolores. Later, Charlotte chooses to send Lolita to a summer camp. After she leaves to take Dolores to the camp, Humbert finds that Charlotte left a letter for him. In this letter Charlotte confesses that she is madly in love with Humbert, and she proposes that he marry her or move out. Afraid that he will be separated from Lolita, he agrees to marry Charlotte.
One day, Charlotte snoops into Humbert's diary and finds that Humbert is in love with her daughter. Angry with herself for falling in love with such a despicable man,...

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...e to simply skip over them. Maybe Humbert's biased narrations fooled the readers, but when topics such as drugging and murder come up it's rather difficult to be confused about what is implied. It's possible that the romanticization of the novel could stem from not even reading the book, but due to recent events such as James Franco's scandal and the Steubenville rape case it is more probable that Americans sympathize with rapists. Americans even tend to blame the rape victim, as they did in the Steuben ville rape case. If this is the case with Lolita, people would claim that Dolores Haze willingly seduced Humbert Humbert as Lana Del Rey seems to think. The way Americans have classified this novel proves that American society ignores the inappropriate and often
Tate 8 harmful ways men treat women and often ignores what the woman has to say on the matter.

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