Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Department of English
and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Ivana Plevíková

Lolita: A Comparative Analysis of Vladimir

Nabokov's Novel and Stanley Kubrick's
Adaptation

Bachelor's Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Tomáš Pospíšil, Dr.

2014
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 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………………..
Author‘s signature

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 Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor Tomáš Pospíšil for inspiring guidance

and valuable advice provided during the process of writing.

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 Table of Contents

1. Introduction...................................................................................................................5
2. Vladimir Nabokov: Life, Style and the Novel Lolita....................................................9
2.1 Lolita, the Novel............................................................................................11
3. Stanley Kubrick: Life, Style and the Adaptation of Lolita..........................................14
3.1 Lolita, the Adaptation....................................................................................16
4. The Production Code...................................................................................................18
5. Lolita............................................................................................................................23
5.1 Lolita's Voice..................................................................................................23
5.2 Age, Appearance and Beauty.........................................................................27
5.3 Humbert's Encounter with Mrs Pratt / Dr Zempf..........................................31
5.4 The Seduction Scene......................................................................................34
5.5 Advertisements, Conventionality, Naiveté.....................................................36
6. Humbert Humbert........................................................................................................39
6.1 Narration, Unreliability and Likability..........................................................39
6.2 Annabel Leigh................................................................................................48
6.3 Clare Quilty's Murder....................................................................................51
7. Clare Quilty..................................................................................................................55
7.1 Clare Quilty as Humbert's Alter Ego.............................................................55
7.2 Stanley Kubrick's Approach: Quilty as a Riddle...........................................61
8. Charlotte Haze.............................................................................................................67
8.1 Charlotte's Portrayal and Her Interconnection with Lolita............................67
8.2 Comedy, Ambiguity and Subtextual Jokes....................................................70
9. Conclusion...................................................................................................................73
Bibliography....................................................................................................................75
Resumé (English)............................................................................................................78
Resumé (Czech)..............................................................................................................79

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 1. Introduction

This bachelor's thesis presents a comparative analysis of Vladimir Nabokov's

famous novel Lolita published in 1958 and Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation produced

in 1962. Firstly the thesis points out several differences that are in a broader sense

connected to the process of adapting a literary work. Then in the individual chapters, it

thoroughly analyses this process in the particular case of Lolita.

Throughout the last decades the popularity of adapting literary works and

recreating them as feature films rapidly grew. There have been several different methods

used and believed to be correct for adapting them, while the most discussed was the

question of staying faithful to the original work. The most important for the directors is

therefore to realize the differences between literature and film and learn to grasp and

work with them effectively.

One of them is the change of narration form and the means, through which

readers and audience get to know the essential information from the story. In a literary

work, when focusing primarily on novels, most of the information readers come to

know are acquired through the narrator's thoughts, mental processes and descriptions.

These however, are rather static, passive and indirect, therefore are not very much used

in feature films, which are naturally based on motion. The informative value of these

aspects therefore has to be transformed into a more active and dynamic form. Kubrick

limited ―the freedom of interior monologue that is so rich in the book, he decided to go

in the opposite direction, and make plot and dialogue the conveyance of all he wanted to

say‖ (Bordo 302). Because of the generally more informative and extensive nature of

novels, film directors being restricted by film's limited length thus have to decide and

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pick only the most essential and crucial parts of the story. Thus using Michael

Hastings's metaphor, ―if the novel is a poem, the film is a telegram.‖

Among the most significant aspects that film industry introduces to the literary

works belong visuality, motion, sound and possibility of color. Introducing the visual

component into a story makes the person's perception a lot different. When reading a

novel, there is a certain level of indirectness of perception, mainly caused by its form.

Whereas a film directly shows the audience how the characters, scenes or surroundings

look like, while reading one has to use imagination and come up with these images by

themselves.

The element of sound is naturally not limited to the actors' voices, but

importantly also includes music. Stanley Kubrick believed the music in Lolita to be

―probably the easiest way to produce an emotion, which is really the actor's main

problem—producing authentic emotion― and also that music is connected to the ―matter

of getting in the right mood, and music I've found is the best for this, and practically

everyone can respond to some piece or other― (Southern 6-7). McNally claims that

music takes the audience into a new dimension, in which they are allowed to relax and it

helps them to see the film from different angles of vision. (24)

Another difference is closely connected to work's creation and people's

engagement in this process. The authorship or the novel mostly belongs to only one

person, who creates and controls it. Whereas a film is always a collaboration of more

people, such as directors, producers, screenwriters, costumers or scenographers; who

are all responsible for different aspects of a film's creation. This can be demonstrated on

two opposites—privacy and publicity—which a novel and a film metaphorically

represent. Hutcheon cites Michael Ondaatje, who says that:

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 Movies not only used different materials, they had different cooking

times for their great soups, and had to be consumed in public alongside

eight hundred other people as opposed to by one solitary diner. A film

was closer to the simulated excitement of a soccer stadium while books

were a meditative and private act—you sat down to read one or write one

and the first thing you did was ignore the rest of the world. (113)

In regards to the mentioned aspects, this bachelor's thesis analyses Kubrick's

process of adapting Lolita. In the second chapter, the thesis presents the two authors,

Vladimir Nabokov and Stanley Kubrick, roughly describes their lives, opinions, styles

and achievements. In this part, the thesis tries to present interesting and above all

information directly connected to the story and creation of Lolita. To stay as faithful to

factuality of their lives as possible, this chapter is very much leaning on interviews they

had given.

The third chapter focuses on the cultural background in which both the novel

and the film were created and that is mainly the Production Code and censorship of that

time, which caused several problems for both Nabokov and Kubrick. It analyzes

Vladimir Nabokov's writing Lolita, continuing with the struggles with publishing,

Kubrick's desire to adapt the novel and eventually a long and difficult way of producing

it. In detail, this chapter captures the cultural, social and moral standards of the era that

in many respects influenced and restricted many of the artists' creative processes.

Chapters from the fourth to the seventh represent the most important, the longest

and the crucial part of this bachelor's thesis. Each of the chapters is dedicated to one of

the four main characters of the story – Lolita, Humbert Humbert, Clare Quilty and

Charlotte Haze. Each of them is divided into several subchapters, according to the

different aspects, features or scenes in connection to the particular character that they

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analyze. The aim of every part is to equally discuss the aspect in connection to firstly

the novel and secondly the film. Occasionally, these analyses are enriched by the third

viewpoint, that points out the interesting aspects from the second adaptation of Lolita,

directed by Adrian Lyne and produced in 1997. However, the more thorough analysis

and incorporation of this adaptation into the thesis would have to be a subject of a

longer academic work, thus due to its limited scope the thesis mentions only some of its

crucial points.

These four chapters mainly focus on the aspects and the scenes that by

comparing in the both works either differ, are omitted or added. Furthermore, it

observes their cinematographic transformations and decides whether or not, and in what

ways to they influence the perception of the characters and the overall storyline that a

person has firstly when reading a novel and subsequently when watching a film. In the

cases where the thesis comes to a conclusion that the adaptation of a certain aspect

influences spectator's perception of it, it presents possible explanations and origins of

these occurrences.

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 2. Vladimir Nabokov: Life, Style and the Novel Lolita

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov is a Russian-born American novelist and

critic, who was born in St Petersburg on April 22, 1899 and died on July, 2 1977 in

Switzerland. He wrote novels in both English and Russian languages, however the most

valued and famous of them that also brought him world-wide fame was Lolita,

published in 1955. By critics, Lolita is considered one of the best literary works written

in English.

He came from an old aristocratic and highly cultivated Russian family. Soon

after he published his first collections of poems, in 1919, he and his family emigrated to

England, where Nabokov attended Trinity College, Cambridge. Although he first

decided to study zoology, he soon switched to French and Russian literature and

graduated with honors in 1922. In his younger age, he devoted his time to writing

mainly poetry and majority of it, still in Russian. Sometime in 1925, he stopped writing

poetry and started to write prose – short stories and novels. He moved to Germany and

later to France and lived here between the years 1922 and 1940.

In 1925, he got married to Véra Evseyevna Slonim, who worked as a translator.

Later they had a son Dmitri. The interesting fact about Nabokov is that since his

departure from Russia, he never owned a house, therefore never had a stable home for

his family and himself. Instead, he always rented different houses, apartments and

cabins and was moving from one to another, and that was even after the wave of fame

which followed the publication of Lolita.

In 1940 he and his family emigrated to the United States and he gained

American citizenship and made the land his new home. He also switched to writing in

English and said that he would never write another novel in Russian. When he got

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questioned by Alvin Toffler about this change of languages, he explained that ―books

written in Russian by émigré Russians and published by émigré firms abroad were

eagerly bought or borrowed by émigré readers but were absolutely banned in Soviet

Russia, no matter the theme of the story or poem‖ (9) therefore the majority of Russian

speakers, who are naturally living in Russia would not be able to read them either way.

He strengthened the fact that the reason of switching into more widespread language

was not the financial side that would really matter. However, he believed that ―one also

needs some reverberation, if not response, and a moderate multiplication of one‘s self

throughout a country or countries; and if there be nothing but a void around one‘s desk,

one would expect it to be at least a sonorous void, and not circumscribed by the walls of

a padded cell‖ (Toffler 10). Furthermore, regarding the structure of languages

themselves and their textual differences, he notes that ―English is far richer than

Russian. This is especially noticeable in nouns and adjectives‖ (Toffler 9). And mainly

because of this as he explains a huge difference between the languages, he decided to

translate his American muse Lolita to Russian himself, because otherwise ―Lolita would

be entirely degraded and botched by vulgar paraphrases or blunders‖ (Toffler 10).

Among definitely interesting facts about Vladimir Nabokov belongs the fact that

he does not like music and as he claims he has ―no ear for music‖ (Toffler 9) and while

at a concert he cannot keep being there and trying to observe the relationship between

particular sounds for more than a few minutes. He adds ―I am perfectly aware of the

many parallels between the art forms of music and those of literature, especially in

matters of structure, but what can I do if ear and brain refuse to cooperate?‖ (Toffler 9).

Another such fact is that unlike other writers, Nabokov proclaims about himself that he

never learned to type on a typewriter and therefore all books ever written, he wrote in

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longhand. In addition, to each text work structure he ascribes different position of his

body while creating it and says ―Horizontal prose, vertical verse‖ (Toffler 6).

In regards to Nabokov's personal preferences in literature, the two authors that

he could not abide and who for him were hopelessly juvenile are Ernest Hemingway

and Joseph Conrad. When being asked about his favorite authors he listed names like

Joyce, Proust, Pushkin or Conan Doyle, who in particular may have served as a

background for Humbert's and Quilty's detective tendencies. Among poets, he adored

Poe and Verlaine and the prose genres that he never touched were mysterious and

historical novels (Toffler 12). On the subject of self-critique, as the principal failures as

a writer Nabokov listed ―Lack of spontaneity; the nuisance of parallel thoughts, second

thoughts, third thoughts; inability to express myself properly in any language unless I

compose every damned sentence in my bath, in my mind, at my desk‖ (Toffler 8).

One of the characteristic features of Vladimir Nabokov's style that is definitely

reflected in Lolita is the oftentimes misunderstood subject or a central idea of the work.

It is true that every one of his novels has one special topic that it deals with for its whole

duration, such as chess, murder, politics or pedophilia, yet Nabokov's aim in writing is

to encourage his readers to understand his works complexly and search the hidden, not

explicitly presented themes and points. Among other features, he very much enjoys

playing with words and using them as a place to hide ciphered hints for his readers. He

is also very unthrifty when it comes to irony, sarcasm and ridicule.

2.1 Lolita, the Novel

Lolita, the novel which Nabokov once referred to as ―a fruit salad‖ (Jones) was

not only the book that brought Nabokov fame, but also due to its controversiality, it was

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the subject of many negative and condemning reviews and commentaries. When asked

if he ever regrets having written Lolita, Nabokov confidently says ―No, I shall never

regret Lolita. She was like the composition of a beautiful puzzle‖ (Toffler 1). Because of

the brilliance, with which he describes Humbert and his pedophilic desires and

obsession with pre-pubescent girls, he was often questioned with the issue of Humbert's

character being to some extent autobiographical. However, he denied quite clearly all of

these assumptions. In the interview with Lionel Trilling, he even points out specific

examples from the book that differentiate himself from Humbert, such as that ―Humbert

hates American hotels, while Nabokov has had many fine experiences in them. Also,

Humbert confuses a hummingbird with a particular type of butterfly, something as an

entomologist Nabokov would never do‖ (Jones).

Of all books he had ever written, Nabokov marks Lolita as the most difficult of

them. One of the greatest problems while writing it, as he claims, was the lack of

necessary information ―I did not know any American 12-year-old girls, and I did not

know America; I had to invent America and Lolita‖ (Toffler 4). Nonetheless,

considering the fact that he wrote about to him unknown land and subjects, it has to be

acknowledged that eventually he dealt with this issue more than well. Peculiarity of

Nabokov also lies in his precision, every step of his writing is well-thought-out and

reasoned. When he describes, for example, the choice of Lolita's name, he says ―For my

nymphet I needed a diminutive with a lyrical lilt to it. One of the most limpid and

luminous letters is ‗L‘. The suffix ‗-ita‘ has a lot of Latin tenderness, and this I required

too‖ (Toffler 3).

In regard to both Stanley Kubrick's and Adrian Lyne's adaptations of Lolita,

Jason Lee presents his thorough analysis that focuses on Lolita's interconnection with

film industry ever before being adapted for the first time. As he points out ―there is the

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obsession with watching, observing and eyes‖ (103), which leads to the important act of

watching innumerable number of films. And not only the pictures they constantly watch

are in motion, their lives are as well inseparably bound with the act of moving from one

place or a hotel to another. Eyes, as part of this process, represent ―the first major

contact between Lolita and Humbert being when he sucks dirt from her eyeballs‖ (Lee

104). The direct interconnection between Lolita's eyes, film industry and her corruption

is notable in two cases. When she kisses Humbert, she closes her eyes because that is

how actors in Hollywood films would do it. Later, she runs away with Clare Quilty

under the naïve impression of becoming a famous actress. Thus as Lee sums it up

―Lolita's love of the movies leads to her corruption by both Humbert and Quilty‖ (104).

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 3. Stanley Kubrick: Life, Style and the Adaptation of Lolita

Stanley Kubrick is an American motion-picture director, who was born on July

28, 1928 in New York and died March 7, 1999 in England few weeks after releasing his

last film Eyes Wide Shut. He is considered to be one of the most influential directors and

is characteristic mainly for his exceptional approach to visuality and details, as well as

his irony and unusual perspective reflected in his films. Moreover, he is also valued for

his versatility and wide range of different film genres and topics that he focused on and

oftentimes influenced their future in cinematography by marking them with his specific

and original style. Kubrick was not only a director, but as well dedicated his time to

writing, photographing and editing. Since he was a child, he also adored playing chess,

just like Vladimir Nabokov.

From his early age, he despised schools mainly for their educational system and

he never had good grades. He thought that ―the big mistake in schools is trying to teach

children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing

grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale

compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker‖ (Urban). Therefore, he did not

attend any college or university and instead followed his father's career and became

interested in photography. He started to make money by photographing and after some

time this evolved in his interest of film-making. He wanted to become a film director,

however not until he accomplished this aim, he worked as a photographer. Later, he kept

photographing only as a hobby. He directed his first film when he was twenty-three

years old and continued doing so until his death.

His widespread fame came with his first very expensive film Spartacus,

produced in 1960, which introduced him to the world of big films with a working crew

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and famous actors. He also worked on a film One-Eyed Jacks with Marlon Brando,

however, because their priorities and creative visions differed in too many ways, they

decided to cancel this cooperation. The next film after directing Spartacus was his most

controversial one – Lolita. Among his most famous and well-known films belong A

Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut, Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space

Odyssey.

Stanley Kubrick is also distinct thanks to his precise work with a spectator's

thinking. He was essentially against explaining what the pictures he created are about.

He assigns this as a duty of the audience, to decide what the particular film is about for

them and their minds and understanding. When Eric Nordern asked Kubrick to explain

his own interpretation of the meaning of film, he said ―No. […] It would shut off the

viewer's appreciation and shackle him to a ‗reality‘ other than his own‖ (Phillips 48).

This attitude is emphasized by many characteristic features of Kubrick's style, such as

using visual or sound elements to evoke a feeling or an emotion, or giving hints about

storyline's further development by camera's positioning or via focus on rather minor

aspects in scenes. This approach can also be seen in his adaptation of Lolita.

Kubrick was also an opponent of the emerging theory that a film should be seen

only once and said that it is merely ―an extension of our traditional conception of the

film as an ephemeral entertainment rather than as a visual work of art. We don't believe

that we should hear a great piece of music only once, or see a great painting only once,

or even read a great book just once‖ (Phillips 48).

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 3.1 Lolita, the Adaptation

At the time of the adaptation's creation, in the late 1950s and early 1960s,

Stanley Kubrick was the only one who dared to recreate a literary work as scandalous

and controversial after its publication as Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. The strict moral

values of the time therefore predicted various problems with the film's production,

which was held under the supervision of The Production Code Administration. The PCA

was then responsible for many plot omissions, changes or additions. About Lolita's

production, Kubrick said ―If I could do the film over again, I would have stressed the

erotic component of their relationship with the same weight Nabokov did. But that is the

only major area where I believe the film is susceptible to valid criticism‖ (Leff 245).

Nabokov's only objection towards Kubrick's film was ―stressing certain things that were

not stressed – for example, the different motels at which they stayed‖ (Toffler 1).

Otherwise however, he thought that the film was absolutely first-rate. ―Kubrick cut most

of the novel's American panorama because, alas, Lolita was filmed in England‖

(Schuman 198).

Observing the literary from an objective viewpoint, recreating a literary work

and transforming it into a film always requires changes and can never stay the same,

simply at least because books and films are different. Most of the objections against

Kubrick's adaptation of Lolita blames him for not staying truthful to the original work.

The critic Bosley Crowther even believes that ―Mr. Kubrick inclines to dwell too long

over scenes that have slight purpose, such as scenes in which Mr. Sellers does various

comical impersonations as the sneaky villain, who dogs Mr. Mason's trail‖ (Crowther).

That however, seems very much like a misconception of Stanley Kubrick's directorial

intentions. As Lee believes, each scene of Kubrick's Lolita ―works as a play in itself‖

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(Lee 113). For Kubrick, each scene has a specific meaning, enriches and develops either

a particular character or the overall film's point and mood. Kubrick's aim in Lolita is not

to present its point directly, he prefers to hide information and slowly reveal them via

subtext jokes, indirect irony or work with camera. Therefore for instance Mr. Crowther's

seemingly ‗slight purpose‘ of Quilty's impersonations in actuality serves as an expanded

insight into the character of Clare Quilty, which subsequently points at Humbert's lack

of sense of reality and limited perspective, and finally also emphasizes the comedic

genre of the film.

Thus even if these two works seem as two conspicuously different ones, as

Alfred Uhry notes ―adapting is a bit like redecorating‖ (Hutcheon v) and should also

represent a process of reproduction using different and new tools for presenting the

story, than the original one does.

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 4. The Production Code

The Motion Pictures Production Code, was a set of rules that served as a moral

censorship guidelines and played a crucial role in deciding whether a particular picture

could or could not get the Production Code Seal. The creation of The Production Code

first started to be thought of at the beginning of the 1920s in the United States (Jacobs

1). The reason for this was mainly an alarming feeling of many powerful people

working in the movie industry that the number of immoral and for various reasons

inappropriate content is increasingly getting into the movies produced in America.

Among the main restrictions provided by the Code belonged profanity, using of vulgar

expressions, presentation of nudity, human genitals, childbirth, any kind of sexual

perversion, drug addiction or offenses against other nations and races (Lewis 301-02).

All of these were underlined by the Catholic faith by presenting the whole document as

not only the order of law, but likewise the order of God (Doherty 7).

By the time of 1950s, when the novel Lolita had been written by Vladimir

Nabokov, the situation in America had significantly changed. Many film directors

started to feel the need to come up with something new. They desired to create movies

about subjects that are usually not talked about or publicly presented, but just as the

well-known ones are equally a part of people‘s lives. Those were mainly the topics

restricted by the Production Code. In 1950s, the dissatisfaction of society started to be

more and more notable and the situation gradually grew into an era of turbulent

rock'n'roll, numerous outbursts of vandalism, rebellion, carelessness of rules, and

questioning morality and its restrictions. In the matter of sexuality, people were quickly

becoming more sexually curious, sexually aware and slowly also more sexually active

(Leff 219-20).

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 Generally, the public started to be more comfortable with loosening the

restrictions set by the Code several decades ago. Geoffrey Shurlock, the new president

of Production Code Administration, tried to use his influential status for the Code to be

revised and certain points from it being erased. However, then the expected conflict

between independent producers and extremely austere Legion of Decency arose.

Several years before that, in the year 1947, the novelist Vladimir Nabokov wrote a

novel about a man obsessed by young pre-pubescent girls. After the novel had come

out, it became at once a nightmare and a dream of America. It was a huge sensation

among people, it was widely discussed and rumored, judged and praised,

controversially reviewed and compared to other pieces of literature (Leff 222).

Before the first official publication of Nabokov‘s Lolita, it struggled for quite a

long time, till the publishers admitted that the novel is worthy of being published. In the

early days of Lolita, the book just roamed around New York on its own and was finding

its readers through several bootlegged copies that existed. When Nabokov got annoyed

and disappointed by the unpleasant situation of the book's publication, he decided to

take a chance and send the book to Paris, where Olympia Press published it in English

language in 1955. A year after on August the 18th of 1958, Lolita was finally published

in America. Because of its subject and controversy, it again started an unstoppable

avalanche of rumors, reviews and contradictory opinions. Within a few days, America

totally condemned the book. People called it ―dull‖, ―repulsive‖ and ―an obscene

chronicle of murder and a child's destruction‖ (Leff 224). Nevertheless, the opinions

presented in media and press were exclusively single-sided and subjective, since all

others would have no chance to get there.

In September 1958, a few weeks after the book's publication, a young director

Stanley Kubrick and his partner James Harris had optioned the novel and contacted

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Shurlock about it. After producing Stanley Kubrick's first expensive film Spartacus, he

got used to the idea of big budgets and financing and wanted the same for Lolita,

therefore aspired for one of the top production companies, which naturally required

having the Seal. After the key meeting with Shurlock in 1958, all hinged on financing,

which hinged on the approval of the Production Code Administration (Leff 226).

Expectedly, the fact of a twelve-year old Lolita and much older lover Humbert seemed

to be the biggest problem right from the beginning. The first company that Kubrick

turned to, United Artists, found both Kubrick and Harris presumptuous and arrogant and

refused to make any kind of deal with ―a couple of youngsters‖ (Leff 227). Afterwards,

they turned to Warner Bros. and Columbia, which both eventually passed on Lolita.

After the great struggle, production company Seven Arts offered them a chance,

Kubrick purchased the novel for a reported $125,000 and Nabokov was offered to

author the screenplay for Lolita. The first and the biggest concern was again Lolita's

age. The Production Code Administration instructed them that Lolita can remain twelve

but has to be Humbert's wife, or she has to be older, in which case she can be his lover,

but under no circumstances twelve and unwed (Leff 228). While Nabokov was working

hard on the screenplay, Kubrick was choosing the actors for the main characters. The

most important was the choice of the actress for Lolita. The one that tried to get the part

the most was the actress Tuesday Weld who said ―I don't have to play it, I was Lolita‖

(Black 204). The role was eventually won by a twelve-year-old blonde model Sue Lyon.

After casting all the other characters such as James Mason as Humbert Humbert, Peter

Sellers as Clare Quilty and Shelley Winters as Charlotte Haze, they decided to leave

America and start shooting Lolita near London, mainly to avoid being under the

supervision of the PCA.

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 After the script was finished in December 1960, Kubrick showed it to Shurlock,

who had several objections to the style, humor and offensive and immoral passages.

Shurlock noted ―You can imagine that if we had to do this it would create a major press

sensation, but I feel sure that a great many people, including many who have not read

the book, would be on our side. Of course the intellectuals would tear us apart‖ (Leff

323-233). Probably one of the most discussed and objectified was the seduction scene in

the hotel and Lolita's tongue in Humbert's ear. According to the script ―Lolita awakes in

the morning and finds Humbert sleeping, rather uncomfortably on a hotel cot; she walks

over to the cot and begins to tease Humbert; she bends over him, nuzzles his neck, then

sticks her tongue in his ear‖ (Black 204). A continuation of these scenes when Lolita

teases Humbert and asks him if he wants to play games that she learned in the camp had

two different versions. In the original longer one, he replies ―If it's not too dangerous. If

it's not too difficult. If it's not too – Ah, mon Dieu!‖ (Black 206). However, Shurlock

had strongly objectified against this part, explaining that it is way too explicit and that

all the dialogue needs to be cut or muted.

When Shurlock actually got to see the movie after its shooting had been

finished, he was nicely surprised and more than approved Kubrick's treatment of

Quilty's murder by putting him behind the painting and therefore avoiding blood being

shown on the screen. Shurlock and his staff also semi-approved Lolita's look. In some

scenes she appeared more mature than she actually was, particularly in a black formal

gown with two scoops of white that contrasted her breasts. However at many other

times, she looked and behaved just like a twelve-year-old (Leff 235-36). The

promotional photographs for the movie that featured Sue Lyon in heart-shaped

sunglasses and her tongue on a lollipop were later strictly criticized and vetoed by

Monsignor Little, an official of the Legion of Decency. In September 1961, when the

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members of the Legion voted for the movie's categorization, the largest group of

twenty-six was shocked and voted for a condemnation of the whole picture. After that

―Lolita remained in purgatory for several months. A compromise agreement was finally

negotiated in January 1962. The seduction scene was cut to a fadeout as Lolita bends

over Humbert and begins to whisper in his ear‖ (Black 208).

At the premiere of the movie in June 1962, there was a man at the door, whose

job was to keep all underaged persons out of the cinema. Controversial situation

occurred when the actress of the main protagonist, Sue Lyon appeared at the entrance

and was forbidden to get in. However, thanks to an addition to the order saying ―unless

accompanied by an adult‖, Sue was eventually let in and saw the picture. After the first

screening, Lolita again invoked a huge wave of discussions, rumors, but also of interest.

The queues for the movie were reportedly very long and snaked along the whole

Huntington Avenue and according to the words of author Paul Nathan ―a considerable

part of the audience was under age‖ (Leff 244).

After the premiere the famous question that appeared on all posters promoting

the movie ―How did they ever make a movie of ‗Lolita‘?‖ was sagaciously answered by

the New York Times saying ―They didn't‖. The answer was meant to be a reference to

their long way of dealing with the Production Code Administration and their restrictions

and censorships. It implies that in the age of Kubrick's decision to make this adaptation,

it was legally impossible to make it in a way it would correspond with the atmosphere,

notion and tone of the Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. However, even though the Code cut a

certain amount of the Nabokovian wit, spiciness, and brilliance, it helped the realization

that the Production Code needs to be abandoned, which eventually happened by the late

1960s (Jacobs 1).

22
 5 Lolita

Lolita, by her full name Dolores Haze, is one of the two main characters of the

novel carrying the same name. At the beginning of the story she is a twelve-year-old

pre-pubescent girl and at its end she is seventeen. Therefore the story covers

approximately five years of her life. During those five years many important things,

events and changes happen in her life. The main aim of this subchapter is to remark and

discuss several the most significant of them that are directly and closely related to Lolita

and her role in the story. Afterwards, the subchapter compares and contrasts these

individual aspects with their equivalents portrayed in Stanley Kubrick's movie

adaptation and focuses on the notable and for the story important omissions, additions

and changes that are directly connected and to some extent divert audience's perception

of the characters or the plot. Furthermore, it analyses these and by backing them up with

secondary literature, it offers possible explanations of such occurrences.

5.1 Lolita's Voice

Although Lolita together with Humbert are the main characters of the novel,

their roles in the text in many respects differ. Humbert, who is the narrator of the story

understandably occupies the majority of novel's space. Most of the text presents his

thoughts, feelings and experiences. However, it also presents thoughts, feelings and

experiences of Lolita. The important fact that has to be taken in consideration is that all

of these, and basically everything else, are presented only and exclusively from

Humbert's point of view. The alternative title for the novel Lolita was Confession of a

White Widowed Male. The word confession directly implies that the whole story is

23
formed as some kind of a diary, a piece of literature that on one side presents an

exuberant amount of information about a particular character and therefore offers the

reader a proper and deep insight into his mind. on the other side, by presenting these

information about other characters through his very subjective and single-sided

perception, it basically does not allow readers to directly relate to them.

The novel does not give Lolita enough voice of her own to express herself and

her presence. The closest and most present that she gets is via Humbert's transcriptions

of conversations that they have. However, not even this can be considered as ‗direct‘

connection with readers, since Lolita's speech presented by means of Humbert is only ‗a

reported speech‘. Even these, as Bordo point out are just very ―rare pages when Lolita

herself had dialogue and action‖ (300). Thus, when reading the novel and realizing this

matter, ―one is constantly reminded of the extent to which the novel leaves the character

of Lolita a blank page‖ (Naiman 149). Her voice is suppressed and restricted, therefore

since readers have no way of knowing what kind of person Humbert prevents from

speaking her mind, they have to construct the character themselves, which inevitably

makes her reflect readers' own anxieties and desires (Naiman 149).

Lolita's voice is directly connected to the representation of her sexuality, sexual

pleasures and desires. Scholars have argued that Nabokov could not bring himself to

represent female sexual desire, therefore they consider his novel to have slightly

misogynistic undertone. Elizabeth Patnoe writes that ―while Nabokov avoids sustained,

graphic descriptions of Lolita's violations, his words throw some readers into ripping,

detailed memories of their own molestations‖ (100). That, depending on individual

readers, results in creating numerous different versions of Lolita. One particular

example from the novel that Naiman quotes is Lolita's experience of an orgasm while

sitting on Humbert's lap and reading magazines. Humbert says ―I liked the cool feel of

24
armchair leather against my massive nakedness as I held her in my lap. There she would

be, a typical kid picking her nose while engrossed in the lighter sections of a newspaper,

as indifferent to my ecstasy as if it were something she had sat upon, a shoe, a doll, the

handle of a tennis racket, and was too indolent to remove‖ (163). In this part Nabokov

by means of Humbert speaks of Lolita's behavior and calls it indifference. In regard to

this matter, it is essential to think about what a ‗normal‘ reaction to a sexual awakening

and intercourse of a twelve-year-old would be and whether Nabokov, Humbert or any

other man is entitled to say if this seeming indifference is her real feeling or just his

subjective perception of it.

As a reaction to this, Pia Pera decided to recreate Nabokov's novel and making

Lolita its narrator, she tried to reconstruct the plot from Lolita's point of view. She

presents Lolita as ―a young woman enjoying her body‖ (Naiman 149) and that is the

aspect likewise reflected in Adrian Lyne's adaptation of Lolita, where she is depicted

enjoying the sexual intercourse with Humbert and moaning with pleasure. Regardless of

the quality and realization of Pera's work, important is the initial idea of trying to

perceive events in a way a twelve-year-old Lolita might have, thus trying to decipher

her character and give her a voice that she lacks.

In Stanley Kubrick's film, this issue of a particular character having a dominant

voice over the others is in comparison to the novel not notable to that extent. One

naturally still realizes that Humbert is the one ‗telling the story‘ and that from the

beginning to the end it is primarily his life experience that the spectator watches.

Nevertheless, the difference between perception of the reader and the audience is still

significant. First of all, it is essential to remark that the form of a feature film, into

which Stanley Kubrick transferred Nabokov's novel is completely different than the

written one. In regard to that, the audience's perception of Lolita's character is different

25
as well. Having to grasp a huge amount of information, squeeze them into just the

essential ones and moreover introduce the visual element into the story is on one hand a

very hard thing to do, but on the other it allows the spectator to actually see Lolita, and

all the other characters alongside with her.

However, it is not only the ability to see Lolita as a real person and not have to

imagine her on one's own that redefines the perception of her. Additionally, the novel

mostly consisting of Humbert's inner and personal thoughts and not that much of

dialogues is transformed into the form, where the two of them are represented more

equally. Majority of the long passages of Humbert's thoughts are omitted partly due to

reduction of imbalance between passive and active components of the film and partly

also due to its limited duration. After such process, dialogues and actions become a

more dominant part of the story and therefore increase its dynamics and offer the

character of Lolita and her role to be more equally presented and above all to gain a

voice of her own.

In a broader context, Kubrick not only gives the novel Lolita her own voice, the

possibility to speak for herself, he also gives Lolita to the world. Lolita, who is virtually

hidden in Humbert's confessions, is introduced to the world, has a body and a face and

becomes an icon. In Kubrick's film, even her pet name formerly a secret used only by

Humbert, is used by all characters. Her character becomes more public in every sphere

and as Bordo notes ―for many people, the very word ‗Lolita‘ no longer denotes

Nabokov's fictional twelve-year-old but exists as an all-purpose signifier for the

underage sexual temptress‖ (300).

26
 5.2 Age, Appearance and Beauty

The very first description of Lolita in this story that reader gets are the first

introductory sentences of the novel ―Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin,

my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to

tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta‖ (9). It can be argued that this is not a direct

description and does not reveal any actual information of how she looked like. However

these sentences suggest that everything Humbert ever says about Lolita, descriptive or

not, is inevitably underlined by his feelings and emotions. Humbert's perception of

Lolita in this story will never be limited to the bland descriptions of her appearance, yet

it represents him seeing her as a human being, a body and mind, his sin and his soul.

From the very first sentence readers are aware that the relationship they are about to

witness is something special, rare and unconventional.

Probably the most informative description that Humbert offers occurs at the

beginning of the novel, when he says that Lolita has ―soot-black lashes of her pale-gray

vacant eyes, to the five asymmetrical freckles on her bobbed nose, to the blond down of

her brown limbs‖ and that ―her hair is auburn, and her lips as red as licked red candy,

the lower one prettily plump‖ (44). After that he again interweaves his emotions and

desires into the description and confesses: ―What drives me insane is the twofold nature

of this nymphet—of every nymphet, perhaps; this mixture in my Lolita of tender

dreamy childishness and a kind of eerie vulgarity‖ (44). Throughout the whole story,

Humbert emphasizes the fact that Lolita is a nymphet and that nymphets are what he is

interested in, not the masses of random pre-pubescent girls. He strengthens the fact that

Lolita is unique.

27
 Another distinctive feature used in Humbert's descriptions is a high level of

physicality that he appreciates about Lolita and he pays a lot of attention to it. Although

he is enchanted by her practically all the time, his descriptions never become

sentimentally romantic or unreal. He is indeed very poetic and he is not afraid to let his

emotions infiltrate the thoughts about Lolita and their relationship, but he manages to

keep his poetry very detached, factual and substantial. In his eyes Lolita is very active

and lively child, whenever she does something he closely observes and remarks every

move of her body, her raised shoulder or incurvation of her spine, tense narrow nates,

schoolgirl thighs (42) or juvenile breasts (39). Sometimes he even uses more technical

terms such as ―indrawn abdomen‖ (39) or focuses on little details like her toenails, teeth

and armpits. This close study of all parts of her body seems as if Humbert was a very

perceptive art critic who came to a museum to admire a beautiful and flawless sculpture,

which is Lolita.

This voyeuristic observing is exceptionally emphasized in the later adaptation of

Lolita, where the focus of the camera is in many cases very intrusive and lets audience

see various private details. For example, as Lee notes, Humbert watches Lolita through

the not quite shut door of a toilet (119) and often he also tends to secretly observe

various activities of hers from the top of the staircase. Lolita for instance, acts like a

stalker and is ―watching him work, jumping on his lap, babying him, rubbing his crotch,

wrapping her legs about him‖ (Lee 119).

In the matter of Lolita's age, at the beginning of the novel she is twelve years old

and in its end she is seventeen, therefore an underaged girl for the whole time.

Regarding the novel, there are no subjects of further analysis, since the information is

clearly stated throughout the book. Nevertheless, the issue of age in connection to her

appearance in Kubrick's film is far more arguable and there are raises many questions.

28
Stanley Kubrick's movie Lolita is portrayed by an American actress Sue Lyon who at

the beginning of the shooting was twelve years old as the original Lolita, and by the

time of the movie release, she was about sixteen years old. The decisive declaration

concerning Lolita's appearance was that ―a twelve-year-old bride who looked twelve

years old could block a Seal‖ (Leff 226). On grounds of that, Stanley Kubrick's task was

not only to find a girl who would embody the strangely beautiful and fairy-like

nymphet, but also to find someone who looks several years older and still does not lose

Lolita's childish charm.

After publishing Nabokov's Lolita, his initial standpoint towards the book's

cover was a strict refusal of depicting any girl's faces. He said:

I want pure colors, melting clouds, accurately drawn details, a sunburst

above a receding road with the light reflected in furrows and ruts, after

rain. And no girls. Who would be capable of creating a romantic,

delicately drawn, non-Freudian and non-juvenile, picture for LOLITA (a

dissolving remoteness, a soft American landscape, a nostalgic highway—

that sort of thing)? There is one subject which I am emphatically opposed

to: any kind of representation of a little girl. (Bertram 1)

Later when the book was about to be adapted and it was pretty clear that a girl would

have to be portrayed by an actual person, he relied upon Kubrick and trusted him in the

choice of an actress. He was also familiar with the possibility of raising her original age

and said ―Perhaps they will make her 16 and Humbert 26‖ (Toffler 1).

At the audition, Sue Lyon was just one of the thousands of girls that desired to

be Lolita. Afterwards in Southern's interview Stanley Kubrick explained the choice of

Sue:

29
 We looked at them all, and of course, Sue Lyon was just one of them, but

the moment we saw her, we thought 'My God, if this girl can act, because

she had this wonderful, enigmatic, but alive quality of mystery, but was

still very expressive. Everything she did, commonplace things, like

handling objects or crossing a room, or just talking, were all done in a

very engaging way. And, incidentally this is a quality which most great

actors have, it's a strange sort of personal unique style that goes into

everything they do. (4)

Regarding Sue's age, Leff writes that sometimes ―she looked mature, particularly in a

black formal gown with two scoops of white that accented her breasts, but at other times

she looked and behaved like a twelve-year-old child‖ (236). Even though as Kubrick

had said, her performance, interaction with other characters, looks, moves and facial

expressions were all absolutely stunning, and even though she indeed is beautiful as

Humbert always saw Lolita to be, from most parts she does not fit the description that

he gives in the book. The film Lolita has blond hair with perfect woman-like hairstyle

highlighting the era of 1960s, she has beautiful flawless face, and because of her tall

model-like figure she looks much older. Bordo said that her body ―looked like it had

been enhanced by estrogen for some time‖ (304). The beauty of the original Lolita was,

however, significantly different from Sue's. Sue's beauty is conventional, representing

sort of a mainstream image of a young and beautiful girl, whereas Lolita was unique

and the exact opposite of conventionality, she was supposed to represent the

contradiction between childishness and seductiveness that Humbert adores so much;

and that is something quite different. Moreover, besides unconventionality, Kubrick's

Lolita also lacks her original immaturity, that Humbert adores so much. He stresses her

imperfect smudged lipstick, poor hygiene, her a bit boyish and undeveloped body. He

30
emphasizes his resentment with ―that sorry and dull thing: a handsome woman‖ (72),

therefore as Bordo suggests he ―would probably have found Lyon too feminine to be

desirable‖ (305).

With unconventional appearance, beauty and the true immature vulgarity, Adrian

Lyne's Lolita portrayed by Dominique Swain was a much greater success. At the time of

the shooting, she was as well older than Nabokov's Lolita (Lee 118), however ―Lyne has

loaded her with accessories ostentatiously advertising her girlhood: old-fashioned plaits

wrapped around her head, retainers on the teeth, milk mustaches, oversize pajamas.‖

(Bordo 312). Moreover, with her ―tight top, hair loosely tied back, pale skin

accentuating bright red lips with her index finger resting on her tongue provocatively‖

or ―revealing both thighs sitting baby-like in a child's outfit blowing a bubble with gum‖

she stayed more faithful to the original Lolita's appearance and was soon after film's

production considered to be the ultimate embodiment of ―the uncontrollable ‗daddy's

girl‘‖ (Lee 117).

5.3 Humbert's Encounter with Mrs Pratt / Dr Zempf

This subchapter is dedicated to the comparison and analysis of the scene, where

Humbert consults Lolita's behavior with the headmistress Pratt at Beardsley High

School and an equivalent scene from the movie, when Dr Zempf, the school

psychologist who is actually Clare Quilty, comes to Humbert house.

In this scene in the novel, Mrs Pratt explains Lolita's behavior to her stepfather.

She says that Lolita is very ―bright though careless‖ (181) and by other teachers and

schoolmates considered to be antagonistic, dissatisfied and cagey (183). She is also

censured for her inappropriate behavior, using of obscene words and generally seen as a

31
kid having problems with sexual maturing. Lolita, because of her knowledge of things

that she should not yet be acquainted with, does not have that adolescent joy and

excitement for discovering new things, seeing that they are either uninteresting or

already experienced. Important in this scene is that the main issue that Vladimir

Nabokov tries to point at through Mrs Pratt's words, and that is Lolita's revulsion from

other children of her age, her otherness and therefore a problem with sexual maturing.

He shows that the basis of her problem with sexual maturing is the fact that she, despite

her sexual involvement with Humbert, which certainly is an abrupt and inappropriate

jump into the adulthood, still is a child with her childlike tendencies of behavior.

Therefore, these two different aspects of her personality are colliding with no chance to

correspond and they do not allow her to move further in her psychological development.

Moreover, Nabokov tries to offer the reader an insight into minds of ‗other‘ people that

are neither Humbert, nor Lolita, and present a different angle of looking at this teenage

girl. In the end she mentions that more frequent contact with her schoolmates and peers

through some kind of extracurricular activity would certainly be efficient and could help

in solving her problems with integrating her into society.

Although the equivalent scene from the movie stays true to the original in many

points, it also diverts in several important others. It starts with turning on the lights in

the dark room of Humbert's house, where Clare Quilty pretending to be a school

psychologist Dr. Zempf sits. By coming into his house, it is just another Quilty's move

of exposing himself in front of Humbert, giving him another hint of who he actually is,

and the moment of lighting up the room is just a metaphor for this exposé. Even though

they talk about Lolita all the time, this scene is much more about the two of them than

about her.

32
 Furthermore, what cannot be found in Humbert's conversation with Mrs Pratt

that can clearly be seen here is a strong undertone of threatening along with the constant

ridicule that Dr. Zempf expresses. He starts ambiguously with the question ―Has

anybody instructed Lolita in the facts of life?‖ (Kubrick 1:45:11), where it is very

uncertain what he means by the phrase ‗facts of life‘. Then he explains that ―the onset of

maturity seems to be giving her a certain amount of trouble‖ (Kubrick 1:45:20) and that

―she is suffering from acute repression of the libido‖ (Kubrick 1:47:21). He emphasizes

that it is highly probable that a number of special psychiatrist will come and investigate

their house, and their family situation.

The comical part comes when he tries to explain the situation and despite his

hard-played German accent he says ―We Americans‖ (Kubrick 1:47:37) and then

continues by pulling out several notes with the exact points of discussion, obviously

prepared in advance, which makes the whole situation even more absurd. The thread

and the subtle manipulation come when he implies that the only possible way of

avoiding the house investigation is Humbert's ―un-vetoing that girl's non-participation in

the school play‖ and ―the other two Ds - ‗dating‘ and ‗dance‘‖ (Kubrick 1:50:06).

Thus, the major difference between these two scenes is that the scene from the

novel is more focused on Lolita as a character and above all it offers the reader to step

for a moment out of the usual observation of Lolita exclusively through Humbert's eyes

and try to understand how her character would possibly seem to the other people. On

the other hand, the scene from the film has a different aim, and that is to set the

connection between Humbert and Quilty and by escalating the mystery around Quilty, it

helps to slowly unravel the riddle that he embodies. The thorough analysis of the

connection between Humbert and Quilty can be found in the seventh chapter.

33
 5.4 The Seduction Scene

The scene that takes place at the hotel Enchanted Hunters, where Lolita seduces

Humbert is one of the most discussed and questionable scenes of the story, at least in

respect to Stanley Kubrick's adaptation. The reason for this, as it has been briefly

mentioned in the fourth chapter, is the level of explicitly presented seduction and

eroticism and therefore understandably its connection to the Production Code and

censorship of the 1960s. The original scene the way Nabokov wrote it is first of all

longer and contentual than the one in the film – the dialogues are longer and more

descriptive, therefore give the reader more precise information, which make the

situation that is happening between Lolita and Humbert more obvious and explicit.

The novel scene starts with Humbert addressing these words to the frigid

gentlewomen of the jury: ―I am going to tell you something very strange: it was she

who seduced me‖ (132). This again brings the analysis to the earlier discussed dominant

voice of the story, which is Humbert's, therefore everything including the fact of Lolita

being the seductress is questionable. Important fact to note is also that the night before

the morning of seduction, Humbert lies into the bed right next to Lolita and before she

wakes up, he questions what would she probably think about it. Whereas in the movie,

Humbert decides to take the more polite and importantly moral option and lies on the

cot, even though it is collapsible, as he describes it, and extremely uncomfortable. When

she finally wakes up, they gently kiss and Lolita puts her mouth to his ear and

whispering tries to imply that she wants to play a game she had learned from Charlie in

the camp. Even if this whispering of hers would not be a ciphered sex offer, it still

seemed sexual enough, which was the reason why the Production Code Administration

strictly rejected this part of the scene to be included in the movie. Later in the book,

34
when Humbert acts unaware of what she implies, she is at first really surprised and says

―You mean, […] you never did it when you were a kid?‖ and afterwards takes charge of

the situation and says ―Okay, […] here is where we start‖ (133). After that there is no

further conversation until the next scene.

Despite the fact that the dialogue from Nabokov's script for the film still did not

show any great level of perversity or eroticism, and even though the scene had already

been shot, the Production Code Administration decided to cut it. Then the result after

cutting was basically Lolita coming over to Humbert's cot and with her head very close

over his she encourages him to play a game. When Humbert asks her to describe the

nature of that particular game to him, she whispers it into his ear and because of her

astonishment that Humbert never ‗did it‘ ―Forever playing the victim, Lolita pities him

and feels she must initiate him‖ (Lee 113). Afterwards the scene fades. The original

passage of Humbert's final reaction to Lolita's whispering ―If it's not too dangerous. If

it's not too difficult. If it's not too—Ah, mon Dieu!‖ (Leff 236), where especially the

final French part is a clear sign of Lolita's subjugation of Humbert, was omitted. Even

though the whole cut scene ended up being very simple and seemingly not meaning to

have any kind of seductive undertone, thanks to the great theatrical performances of

both Sue Lyon and James Mason the scene gained some kind of non-verbal complexity.

The combination of their voices' tones, their moves and touches of their hands and

above all their eye-contacts, all of these unravel the point of the situation even though

not explicitly saying it.

Stanley Kubrick also admits that the censorship was not the only reason for not

making this scene fully explicit. He says ―I think the erotic viewpoint of a story is best

used as a sort of energizing force of a scene, a motivational factor, rather than being,

you know, explicitly portrayed‖ (Southern 5) and that ―it's interesting to know how one

35
person makes it known to another person that they want to make love‖ (Southern 6).

Moreover, the movie adaptation as a whole is held in the mood of secrecy, unraveling

the unknown and unspoken, and closely deciphering the riddle. This scene thus goes

very well with this concept and only helps emphasizing it.

Worth mentioning is definitely the equivalent of this scene from Adrian Lyne's

Lolita. Here as Lee points out, prior to the act of seduction ―Lolita remarks, ‗The word

is incest,‘ when she is aware that they must sleep together. Unlike Kubrick's film,

Humbert here is pathetically innocent‖ (119). Even in this adaptation, Humbert has been

previously manipulating Lolita, because he hoped to have sex with her. However in the

moment of seduction, she is the initiator and ―removes her brace, as if now an adult

ready to give him oral sex‖ (Lee 120). Lyne's seduction scene and its aftermaths, when

Lolita sits in the car saying that she should call the police and tell them Humbert raped

and deflowered her, again references back to Elizabeth Patnoe's theory, in which she

discusses what would probably be the nature of such games Lolita learnt in the camp

and had in mind. She says that ―surely Lolita does not think that sexual intercourse is

common among youngsters – while it would be quite likely that she would believe

kissing or petting games are‖ (93), however while ―a youngster may be satisfied with

petting games an adult may not be‖ (95) – and that is basically her explanation of how

such act, where she seduces him, yet eventually gets raped, can happen.

5.5 Advertisements, Conventionality, Naiveté

The final subchapter's aim is to point out and prove that oftentimes personality

aspects and features that are seemingly unimportant and secondary in regards to

transferring Lolita's character from one story to another and creating a character that

36
would represent a parallel as plausible as possible to the original, are as a matter of fact

very important.

One of these aspects that to the great extent create Lolita's personality and the

way readers tend to see or imagine her is her relationship with advertisements,

conventionalism and American popular culture. In the novel, many times Lolita and

Humbert encounter these on their journey through American cities and since this

journey and stays at different hotels are in the film almost completely omitted, audience

has by no means a chance to grasp this significant part of her. In the novel Humbert

states with aversion: ―Mentally, I found her to be a disgustingly conventional little girl.

Sweet hot jazz, square dancing, gooey fudge sundaes, musicals, movie magazines and

so forth—these were the obvious items in her list of beloved things‖ and moreover that

―she it was to whom ads were dedicated: the ideal consumer, the subject and object of

every foul poster‖ (146). On this Humbert also demonstrates several of her

characteristic features. She was extremely easily manipulated by things, about which

average people know that they are manipulative. However, the phrase ‗average people‘

equals adults or near-adults, therefore her succumbing manipulation, exaggerated

trustworthiness and naiveté only emphasize and remind readers of her age, that she is

twelve and still a child with absolute right to act the way she does. In the passage ―If a

roadside sign said VISIT OUT GIFT SHOP—we had to visit it, had to buy its Indian

curios, dolls, copper jewelry, cactus candy‖ (146) it can be seen that she is not only

naïve but also stubborn and a bit simple-minded.

The part of the story when this obsession of advertisements, magazines and huge

amount of useless stuff passes the line of adulthood and mixes with her childishness, it

strikes the reader with repetitive realization of how equally strange and absurd

Humbert's and Lolita's relationship actually is. It happens a while after their first sexual

37
experience when Lolita gets to know about the death of her mother. Few hours after she

played an adult-like seductress and had sex with her stepfather in course of a few

minutes she turns into the most vulnerable child of all children. As to comfort a little

girl, Humbert buys her a bunch of mostly useless objects that he describes as follows:

four books of comics, a box of candy, a box of sanitary pads, two cokes, a

manicure set, a travel clock with a luminous dial, a ring with a real topaz,

a tennis racket, roller skates with white high shoes, field glasses, a

portable radio set, chewing gum, a transparent raincoat, sunglasses, some

more garments – swooners, shorts, all kinds of summer frocks. (141)

However, the real reason for this is not as it would probably seem, a compensating for

the loss of her mother and cheering her up. It was more selfish and perverse. Even

though he liked the childishness of hers in some ways, it annoyed him in others. Thus he

just simply wanted to stop her from crying, so he can make love to her again as soon as

possible.

Nevertheless, by returning back to the main point, an omission of this seemingly

minor aspect of Lolita's personality causes that the audience is unable to perceive these

nuances and see the consequences of them, and therefore is also unable to fully

understand Lolita's fight on the edge between adulthood and childishness.

38
 6. Humbert Humbert

This subchapter focuses on the character of Humbert Humbert and his portrayal

in both Nabokov's novel and Kubrick's film. It analyses different aspects of his personal

characteristics and compares how they are presented in both works. It is divided into

three parts. The first part examines Humbert as a narrator of the novel and the way his

language and narrative style makes him at the same time unreliable, yet still likable for

the readership. It analyses the aspects that influence the fact that a reader is able to have

both of these rather contradictory opinions of him. Consequently, it contrasts this with

the narration in the film and points out the main differences caused by the change of

presented medium as well as Stanley Kubrick's directorial decisions. The other two

parts are dedicated to particular sections of the novel and the film. The second part deals

with the early period of Humbert's life—his relationship with Annabel Leigh; and

consequences of this life period's omission in the adaptation. The last part describes the

scene of Clare Quilty's murder and its diametrically different placements in both works,

and offers the possible differences in perception of Humbert's character that may result

from the change that Kubrick decided to make.

6.1 Narration, Unreliability and Likability

Humbert Humbert is another of the four main protagonists of Vladimir

Nabokov's novel Lolita. He is a middle-aged educated man of English origin, an

emigrant in United States and a university teacher of French. Humbert, apart from being

the main protagonist is also a narrator of the story, thus basically everything reader

comes to know is a secondhand information retold by him. Jakob Lothe says that

39
―Unless the text happens to provide indications to the contrary, the narrator is

characterized by narrative authority‖ (25). Therefore, the readers tend to perceive the

narrator as an authority in comparison to the other characters that are presented to them

merely by means of the narrator. From basic situations in life, it can be compared to a

conversation of two people, where one retells a story to the other. The listener does not

know any particular circumstances of the story, therefore they always tend to accept the

version they are told. Nevertheless, it is a well-known fact that the same story told by

different people is nearly always to some extent different. Moreover as Michael Kaylor

believes, by turning a story into the narrative and repeatedly telling it to people some

events get naturally highlighted and some are simply brushed away. The narrator

therefore, deliberately or not, never narrates the story quite truthfully (Kaylor).

As Lothe continues ―A fundamental convention in narrative fiction is that we

believe the narrator, unless the text at some point gives us a signal not to do so. If the

text does give such signals, the narrator's authority may be undermined and the narrator

becomes unreliable‖ (25-26). Thus, if the reader for some reason feels as if they should

not trust the narrator, because they feel that the story is presented subjectively or

includes personal involvement that biases it, they decide not to trust the narrator.

However it is not always this simple and does not work in some cases – such as

Humbert's. There is a huge number of readers still balancing on the edge between

accepting and resenting him.

James Phelan tried to come up with an explanation for the likability of an

unreliable narrator by introducing his theory of unreliability, in which he distinguishes

between ―estranging unreliability, by which I mean unreliable narration that underlines

or increases the distance between the narrator and the authorial audience, and bonding

unreliability, by which I mean unreliable narration that reduces the distance between the

40
narrator and authorial audience‖ (223). The descriptive adjectives that he uses ―refer to

the consequences of the unreliability for the relations between the narrator and the

authorial audience‖ (225). In the mentioned bonding unreliability, which is the case of

Humbert, the narrator uses various means and powers that he has to manipulate reader's

thinking and perception of him. The desired result of this is a reduction of distance

between narrator and his audience. Phelan adds that ―although the authorial audience

recognizes the narrator's unreliability, that unreliability includes some communication

that the implied author—and thus the authorial audience—endorses― (225), which

means that the communication, thus the way narrator addresses the narratee and tell

them his story, creates a bond between them that may result in narratee's lasting favor

and acceptance of him. Further analysis observes Humbert's means and powers for

keeping this favor of his readership.

One of the first aspects of his narration that definitely seems appealing is the fact

that Humbert in the early beginning of the novel reveals himself and confesses to the

readers about his life and his desires for nymphets. Wayne Booth compares this moment

of confession to the first sentence in the book of Job, which says that Job was ―perfect

and upright, one that feared God, and eschewed evil‖. He says that ―here we get at one

stroke the kind of information about Job that we never obtain about people we know

ourselves, not even the most intimate friends‖ (Lothe 25). That means that the reader

feels somehow honored to be able to know this information about him and be a part of

the intimacy that the narrator creates.

To be able to get underneath the reader's skin, at the beginning of the novel

Humbert accordingly exposes himself. After several introductory sentences when the

reader starts to get acquainted to his stirring language he states that ―you can always

count on a murderer for a fancy prose style― (9). In his essay Anthony Moore asks

41
―Why, one may ask, would a murderer writing for his life give his game away and admit

guilt in the first breaths of his narrative?‖ (6). Why would anyone reveal the biggest

secret one can possibly have in the very first lines of his storytelling?

As readers continue to read the book, they soon realize that the narrator is not a

prototype of a murderer, a type of person they would normally expect to be one. From

Humbert's writing performance, his style can be divided into two different types. The

first is the one stating facts about him, his life and experiences, the second one exists

alongside the first one and serves to soften the factual content that he presents. In other

words, the first voice of his is very real, specific and informative, the other is more

poetic, uncertain, imaginative and fairy-tale like; sometimes even to the extent that the

reader is aware of the fact that the narrator makes certain things up, yet presents them as

real and factual.

That is apparent from his later revelation of his love for nymphets and a precise

description of who they are and who they are not. He says:

Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of

nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched

travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature

which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen

creatures I propose to designate as ‗nymphets‘ […] between those age

limits, are all girl-children nymphets? Of course not. Otherwise, we who

are in the know, we lone voyagers, we nympholepts, would have long

gone insane. (16-17)

Although it is quite evident that they are practically all the same children, only the few

particular ones that catch his attention are visibly distinct, however not to all people,

42
just to himself, his mind and perception, which are based on his personal preferences

and desires, not on some scientific information as he seems to be presenting it.

His fancy and diversified language is supposed to serve two purposes, whose

aim is to distinguish himself. Firstly, it aims to point out his alienation or estrangement

as a British emigrant in America, he wishes to highlight the boundary between himself

and the new land he came to live in. He highlights this fact not only with language, but

also his negative attitude towards American hotels or pop-culture that Lolita adores so

much. And secondly, he likes to distinguish himself from his readers, not only

American, of course, but all of them. He wants to emphasize that he is a highly educated

man and wants to be friends with his readership, but not friends on a base of equality.

He wishes to be a friend that is at the same time perceived as the authority, someone

who is well-oriented in virtually everything he thinks of.

In the part where Humbert mentions famous people like Virgil, King Akhnaten,

Queen Nefertiti or Petrarch, who all had unusual sexual relationships just like his with

Lolita is, the reader may come to the conclusion that he tries to justify his lust and

desires. In actuality, he does not ask for apology or justification of his deeds, not even

for understanding. He does not need to ask for any of that, seeing that the personality of

his that he presents, the authority that he builds up and the marvelous and elaborate

language that he uses mostly make readers to side with him and like him without feeling

pressured to do so. For instance, whenever his narration involves pedophilia and

perversity, he immediately switches to using his ornate, poetic style to somehow numb

the reader's ability to perceive his thoughts as wrong and sick, and makes them to focus

on the marvelousness of his language instead. As Moore sums the issue of Humbert's

reliability, he claims ―How reliable is Humbert? Completely, when we reread the

meaning in his styles‖ (80).

43
 When analyzing the narration in film, one have to realize that in general, it is

diametrically different from the narration in literature. As it has been mentioned,

because the presented mediums' characteristic features are in many respects distinct, the

distinctness is as well mirrored in the form of narration. As David Bordwell believes

―film has narration but no narrator: in watching films, we are seldom aware of being

told something by an entity resembling a human being . . . [Therefore film] narration is

better understood as the organization of a set of cues for the construction of a story. This

presupposes a perceiver, but not any sender, of a message‖ (Lothe 28). Thus, a book is

narrated by a particular person, that depending on circumstances can or cannot be

named, but what is more important, the reader is usually able to list some characteristics

of them or their narrative style, to give details of some of their significant features.

Whereas in film audience can at most notice which of the characters are more important

than the others, meaning that their presence is more (or less) important for the

storyline's eventual development.

In Stanley Kubrick's Lolita, the main protagonists are Humbert and Lolita,

however, Humbert is more likely to be identified as the narrator. That is partly a result

of the assimilation of film with the novel, and partly because Humbert's presence is

prevailing due to the occasional voice-overs that he narrates. However, in the whole

film there are altogether only five of these off-stage commentaries, which does not give

Humbert that much space after all. Moreover, the expectations of the audience would

probably be that Humbert would reveal some of his private feelings, desires,

observations or excerpts of his diary here, like he does in Adrian Lyne's adaptation,

where his voice-overs are far more intimate, diary-like and informative than in

Kubrick's film, where all except for one, state merely unimportant information that just

accompany the visual component of the events. For example, in the very first voice-

44
over, that comes right after Quilty's murder and dates the scene four years back,

Humbert introduces basic information about his arrival to the United States and says

―Having recently arrived in America, where so many Europeans had found a haven

before, I decided to spend a peaceful summer in the attractive resort town of Ramsdale,

New Hampshire‖ (Kubrick 12:26). The narration is accompanied by the images of a

landing plane, an arriving train, a car traffic, a landscape of a neighborhood and finally a

taxi arriving to Haze's house.

The possible role of Humbert's voice-overs is not to identify him as the narrator,

but to highlight how his perception of the world, the one that he presents, is different

from the real course of events in the film. This notion of Humbert's ‗blindness‘ is even

more strengthened by film's camera, which intentionally shows audience more than

Humbert is able to see, and that particularly in references to Clare Quilty (Falsetto 86),

which is analyzed thoroughly in the seventh chapter. Interesting to note is the role of the

one particular voice-over that reveals Humbert's personal thoughts. Kubrick naturally

could not make Humbert speak through this commentaries about his perverted desires

of Lolita's childish body, therefore he solved it ―very intelligently, by using the

relationship between Humbert and Charlotte […] to expose the ‗hidden‘ Humbert‖

(Bordo 303). In this voice-over, while walking the rooms with the gun in his hand, he

openly thinks about killing Charlotte and tries to come up with the perfect scheme for

this murder. Therefore this scene nicely distinguishes his public face from the private

one.

Returning to Bordwell's quote, the message of the film is sent through the scenes

that are carefully put together and creates a film. Scenes or ‗cues‘, as Bordwell calls

them, are more specifically called narrative units. According to Falsetto ―A narrative

unit, for present purposes, involves a character or characters performing a distinct action

45
in one location‖ (2). Kubrick's Lolita contains thirty-five of these units, therefore it is

apparent that even if Humbert's voice-over sections contained more intimate and private

information, his voice still would not gain enough superiority over the other characters,

as it does in the book.

In Kubrick's film, the character of Humbert is portrayed by the actor James

Mason, who at the time of its production was fifty-one years old. When Southern asked

Kubrick whether he considers his choice of Mason for portraying Humbert to be right,

he said: ―Yes, I always thought he had just the right qualities for Humbert, you know,

handsome but vulnerable, sort of easy-to-hurt and also a romantic, because that was true

of Humbert, of course, that beneath that veneer of sophistication and cynicism, and that

sort of affected sneer, he was terribly romantic and sentimental‖ (5). Mason indeed

grasped the duality of Humbert's personality with enviable ease and elegance. Audience

can also observe the naiveté of his character and dwelling in his own world, where he

represents its center and is absorbed with himself and his well-mannered highbrow

intellectuality to that extent that he ceases to see important things happening around

him. This aspect can be seen in the opening credits of the film and likewise in its final

scene.

Leff describes how ―Lolita opens with a foot descending against a satin

backdrop into the frame. […] A hand moves into the frame and tenderly palms the

suspended foot […] and starts to apply nail gloss, from the largest toe to the smallest.‖

and subsequently explains that ―the pedicure conveys the obsession and the devotion,

the subjugation and the tenderness, the dream and the nightmare of Humbert Humbert‖

(235). This initial picture of Humbert's obsession thus gives the audience a hint about

his limited perception of the surrounding world, since all he is able to see is Lolita.

46
 The final scene of Humbert's and Lolita's meeting is a odd mixture of strange

feeling of a reunion after long time and yet everlasting anger of her neglecting him,

escaping from him, and betraying his authority. He is still driven by the force of his self-

importance and feels the urge to kill the one responsible for taking Lolita away. Thus a

paradoxical situation occurs when it is apparent that he still loves her even though she is

―worn at seventeen‖ (275) and not a nymphet anymore. He wants her to run away with

him, yet he threatens her with not giving her the money if she does not reveal Quilty's

name. He still cannot get rid of his unrealistic fantasizing about him and Lolita being

together and with the romantic music in the background he desperately grabs her and

naively says ―I want you to leave your husband and this awful house. I want you to live

with me and die with me and everything with me‖ (Kubrick 2:29:22). It is a very

strange and rare kind of encounter of two people who are at the time in completely

different places in life, with no chance to understand each other, therefore the

estrangement is present as never in the whole film. Kubrick said about this scene that:

One of the things I wanted to get there, as completely as possible, was

this element of disparity, which you see in life but practically never in

film, where two people meet after a long time and one of them is still

emotionally involved and the other one is simply embarrassed and yet

she wants to be nice, but the words just sort of plunk down, dead, and

nothing happens, just sort of total embarrassment and incongruity.

(Southern 5)

Another subject of the analysis is Humbert's more dark and evil side, which is in

the novel presented mostly through his narration that reveals his thoughts of Lolita's

depravation, his resentment of the world, self-centeredness and selfishness. In the film

however, in regards to the missing narrator and moral restrictions of its production, his

47
negative side is depicted otherwise. As Bordo observes, the most of his hatred and

evilness throughout the film is expressed towards Charlotte (Bordo 303). He constantly

ridicules almost everything she does (even though her intentions are not primarily bad),

including her romantic feelings for him and finally her death, after which he treats

himself with a hot bath and a martini. Thus, if the authenticity of Humbert's film

portrayal can be judged by the equally depicted strengths and vulnerabilities, positives

and negatives, by depicting collisions of these opposite sides and therefore showing

diversity and multi-facetedness of his personality, then the theatrical performance of

James Mason portrays the likable yet diabolic character of Humbert Humbert quite well.

6.2 Annabel Leigh

Annabel Leigh is Humbert's supposed first love, whom he met when he was

thirteen years old. For the first time he mentions her in the introductory sentences of his

narration and says that ―there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one

summer, a certain initial girl-child‖ (9). From the beginning, he implies that there is a

connection between that 'girl' and Lolita and that Annabel is inseparable part of not only

him, but also of his relationship with Lolita. From Humbert's descriptions of Annabel, it

is apparent that he is assimilating her with himself way too much. Firstly he says about

his father that he was ―a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent, with a

dash of the Danube in his veins‖ (9), which he as his son was as well, and then he says

that Annabel ―Annabel was, like the writer, of mixed parentage: half-English, half-

Dutch‖ (11). Later he claims that ―Long after her death I felt her thoughts floating

through mine. Long before we met we had had the same dreams. We compared notes.

48
We found strange affinities. The same June of the same year (1919) a stray canary had

fluttered into her house and mine, in two widely separated countries‖ (14).

These strange similarities lead to the theory that in her, Humbert wanted to

create a kind of alter-ego of himself. Circumstances of Annabel's existence are in some

respects a bit odd, which encourages readers to question it. On one side, Humbert

describes several scenes with Annabel to a quite great detail, he remembers every pose

of her body, all the surroundings, sounds and colors; and on the other he cannot

remember her face because the only photo he had was blurred. That very much points at

a certain level of imbalance of memory abilities that he has and again points at his

unreliability. The next is more than notable use of Humbert's fantasy instead of using

real facts when narrating the story. He himself admits that his name is fabricated, but in

case of other names such as Annabel's mother's name Vanessa Van Ness, which is

probably a bit too incidental. Even Annabel herself has a name almost identical to Edgar

Allan Poe's Annabel Lee. Moreover as Bordo points out ―It's a boy's fantasy—not a

boy's memory—of a first sexual encounter‖ (311).

Another curiosity leads to the writer of Lolita's preface John Ray, Jr., who as we

get to know is made-up as well. As Thomières believes ―We do not even have the

certainty that such a person as Annabel Leigh ever existed in reality‖ (167). What

should then convince readers that she was a real person, a real life experience of

Humbert's, a trigger to his obsession and not just a form of justification of his

pedophilia in front of them? From the beginning of the novel, readers are gradually

starting to be fully aware that none of the information can be with certainty considered

true. Thus everything that Humbert says, even the story of his juvenile love Annabel

Leigh, can as well be only a game that he plays to get readers on his side and to gain

their acceptance.

49
 The issue of Annabel Leigh's character in regard to the comparison with the film

is surprising, because in film there is neither Annabel Leigh, nor any sign or reference to

her existence. In connection to Edgar Allan Poe, Abrams believes that ―Kubrick

probably should have left this element in the film, to claim for himself yet another

reincarnation: a kind of Pythagorean nymphic transmigration of the literary soul of

Annabel Lee from Poe‘s verse to Nabokov‘s novel to Kubrick‘s film‖ (Abrams 122).

Reincarnation is indeed notable in every aspect of Annabel Leigh's existence. The first

is as cited reincarnation from one work of art to another; the second is her supposed

reincarnation to the character of Lolita, as Humbert says ―I broke her spell by

incarnating her in another‖ (15). Without prior knowledge of the novel, the audience is

not offered any explanation of Humbert's obsession with nymphets or its origins. In the

novel, the reader knows about it and can therefore question the trustworthiness of the

fact. And be it true or not, it is definitely a form of manipulation of what reader thinks

about Humbert. Readers can decide whether they believe this story and accept his

unusual desires or not. Kubrick in his film completely omits this part, along with other

parts of Humbert's encounters with women, for instance Valeria, an imitation of a little

girl (25).

Kubrick practically starts the story in the tenth chapter when Humbert looks for

a place to live in New England and the nine chapters before stay untold. Just like in the

novel, in a certain part of film's audience, Humbert's past relationships and the fact that

Lolita had a predecessor in time when he was young could arouse the feeling of

understanding and empathy. However, due to the omission they are not offered such

opportunity, therefore involuntarily perceive Humbert in a different light.

In Adrian Lyne's adaptation, unlike in Kubrick's, Lolita had a precursor and the

past romance with Annabel Leigh is depicted. Although the scene's voice-over cites

50
Nabokov's novel which was praised by the critics, there certainly are aspects to

objectify against. The most important of them being, as Bordo believes, the actresses's

appearance: ―The actress looks to be about eighteen, and straight off the pages of

Glamour magazine, complete with fashionable straw hat and pretty camisole, which she

unbuttons seductively‖ (311). Afterwards she ironically adds that when she saw the

scene, she ―knew that something fatally wrong was going to happen in this movie‖

(311). Basically, the biggest problem with this is that by depicting two people that

definitely do not look like a pair of pre-teens experiencing their first sexual encounters

(but look much older), for audience the scene does not evoke that desired atmosphere of

the intimacy perhaps experienced too early and therefore the character being marked by

the obsession with twelve-year-olds ever since.

6.3 Clare Quilty's Murder

In regards to the comparative analysis of the novel and the film, the scene of

Clare Quilty's murder is definitely worth mentioning. The scene's content is basically

almost similar in both works. The decisive aspect, which does not change this scene

itself, but the audience's perception of the film and the characters is its placement.

Vladimir Nabokov himself expressed a great satisfaction with Kubrick's realization of

this particular scene and said ―These are moments of unforgettable acting and directing.

The killing of Quilty is a masterpiece‖ (Toffler 1).

In the novel, the scene represents Humbert's final act and is chronologically

placed at the end. It starts with Humbert entering Quilty's mansion and looking for him.

As he describes, the place has very ugly walls, used glasses on the carpet and sticky

banisters (293), therefore it is not a very pleasant looking and clean place. When he

51
finally finds Quilty, they start talking and the comical flow of Quilty's jokes and verbal

games starts. The comicality originates mainly in the characters' significantly different

attitudes towards the situation. Humbert informs Quilty that he is about to die and is

very determined and serious about the words he addresses to him. Quilty on the other

hand first plays a game of not recalling Humbert's face and identifies him with someone

else, when he says ―Are you by any chance Brewster?‖ (294). This expression of

inability to recognize Humbert is a way to repeatedly ridicule him and make him aware

of the fact that even though the man talked to him at the hotel and followed him and

Lolita for such a long time, he is careless about the whole situation so much that he does

not bother himself remembering his face or name.

Sarcasm, mockery, jokes and verbal games, which are interwoven in Humbert's

narration for the whole time in the novel is now transferred to Quilty, who despite the

fact he is about to die is still at ease and seems on the top of the situation much more

than Humbert, who although he has a gun cannot make him obey and be scared. One of

the most comical scenes that perfectly describes their opposite attitudes toward what is

happening is when Humbert hands Quilty a ―neat typescript‖ (298) which is supposed to

be Quilty's death sentence. The versed text written in the typical Humbertian poetic

style contains some serious accusations and thus sentencing him to death, such as

―Because you took advantage of my disadvantage […] Because you took advantage of

my inner essential innocence […] Because you cheated me of my redemption‖ (298-

99). However, Quilty's in-between commentaries, for example ―A little repetitious,

what? Where was I?‖ (298) or ―Well, sir, this is certainly a fine poem. Your best as far

as I'm concerned‖ (299) again only ridicules even the last bit of Humbert's seriousness

and authority and tries to rob him of all joy and satisfaction from the act of murder that

he is about to commit.

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 The development of the equivalent scene in Kubrick's adaptation is in its essence

practically the same. What is different is the retrospective position, in which Kubrick

decided to place it. Instead of coming towards the end as the final scene, it comes as an

introductory one. For the audience, knowing the film's end right at its beginning causes

a big difference in its further perception. Besides that, the visual element and recreation

of the scene for screen moves it to a completely different dimension. The scene is very

dynamic, decadent and tragicomical.

Likewise it starts with Humbert entering Quilty's house, but this time he walks

into the room, where Quilty sits, yet he does not notice him. That is again a reference to

Humbert's inability to notice Quilty in different impersonations that he presents during

the film. He sits covered in the white sheet on an armchair and Humbert does not see

him until he uncovers himself like already many times before, and stands up. The theme

of playing games that flows through the whole story is as well resurrected when Quilty

invites him to play ping-pong. When Humbert shows him that he is serious and points

with a gun at him, he responds with ―it's not really who wins, it's how you play‖

(Kubrick 6:55), which is virtually a metaphor for everything that happened between

Lolita and the two of them. He reminds him that even if he kills him, the fact that Lolita

ran away, that he won her over Humbert will still stay true. The element of comicality

and ridicule is here even more present than in the novel, and that is mainly thanks to the

excellent performances of both actors. One such instance is, as Nelson says, that ―He

[Quilty] sprinkles his language with clichés like the Boy Scout motto, as he pulls from a

robe pocket beneath his toga an endless supply of ping pong balls‖ (Nelson 72).

The important aspect is that at the beginning of this scene, neither of the

characters are known to the audience, thus people watching the film do not know if the

characters know each other or have met before, therefore, they can only guess what is

53
happening. Till the end of the scene, they get to know that Quilty is Quilty, but not until

the next scene is Humbert's identity revealed. Nevertheless, they both enter the story

with a conflict that ends in one's death, therefore the audience needs to have this fact on

their minds for the whole duration of the film. This retrospection and gradual filling of

the information up only intensifies the presence of crime and detective element in the

story, as well as the element of playing—this time guessing games.

Finally, a placement of this scene at the beginning of the film not only

emphasizes these elements, it is also decisive for the character of Humbert and it

influences the development of the audience's opinion of him. Due to the murder scene

being presented to the audience at the beginning, they may automatically assume that

Quilty is a bad guy and Humbert, although he kills him, might be considered as the

better one, who acts righteously and gives him what he deserves. What matters here is

that without the prior knowledge of the book's plot, the audience may subconsciously

expect Humbert to be better than he actually turns out to be and therefore it may

incorrectly influence their overall perception of his character.

54
 7. Clare Quilty

This subchapter focuses on Clare Quilty's character and his portrayal by Peter

Sellers. It is divided into two parts. The first one analyzes the relationship of Quilty and

Humbert and explains the duality between them. It also discusses the way this duality

was depicted in the film and analyses particular scenes connected to it. The second part

focuses primarily on Stanley Kubrick's adaptation and his choice of the actor Peter

Sellers for Quilty's role. It studies thoroughly Kubrick's use of camera and explains how

it supports the idea of Clare Quilty's representation of mystique and riddle in the story.

7.1 Clare Quilty as Humbert's Alter Ego

Clare Quilty does not belong to the characters frequently participating in the

story. However, he as a character is still a very interesting individual, who definitely

enriches the story's plot and moreover protects it from being stagnant at its certain

points. Besides his role as a playwright, Quilty also gained a significant importance by

serving as a means of presenting and emphasizing certain aspects of the story, especially

Humbert's characteristic features. In a broader sense, he also serves as a means of

presenting America as a land and a culture contrasting with the one Humbert comes

from. By Quilty's ghostly appearances in scenes, the reader usually tends to get a new

perspective of the current situation. His existence in the text encourages its readers to

perceive Humbert via his darker alter ego Clare Quilty, and therefore to somehow

defamiliarize him, which eventually offers them to redefine their overall opinion of him.

When analyzing the presence of duality in the novel, it is essential to note its

initial instance right at the beginning – Humbert's duality with Annabel Leigh that has

55
been discussed in previous subchapter. However, the further analysis of Humbert's

alternative self diverts from the first one diametrically. In the case of Annabel, it is

predominantly Humbert's attitude and perception of her personality, and merely his

evaluation of the resemblances and bonding points between them. Whereas in the case

of Clare Quilty, he is never someone Humbert would desire to bond with, to be alike

and share any resemblances whatsoever; it is mostly the audience, the outer observer

who notices this alikeness. As Abrams noted, among their most significant similarities

belong that they are ―both literary men, both have pedophilic interests, both have loved

Lolita, both are detectives‖ (Abrams 113). The love, however, in Quilty's case is a rather

arguable subject.

Moreover, both of them are artistically oriented 'mad men', and paradoxically

while acting like detectives following and searching for each other, they are at the same

time criminals and they are both guilty. Nevertheless, all of these similarities are

expressed and accepted by each of them in quite different ways, which though being

alike also makes them to a great extent diverse. One of these differently presented

features is their madness. As Abrams believes ―Quilty's madness is creative, he lives his

life as though he were a character in a play‖ whereas Humbert ―is always Humbert the

obsessed, Humbert the resolvent, absolutely single-minded in his madness‖ (113).

In the final scene of the story, Humbert paraphrases Lolita, who stresses another

difference between the two: ―He [Quilty] saw—smiling—through everything and

everybody, because he was not like me and her but a genius. A great guy. Full of fun.

Had rocked with laughter when she confessed about me and her― (Nabokov). Therefore,

there is a paradox in the representation of two characters which are in a way each other's

alter egos, seeing that many of their primary characteristics and desires correspond, yet

at the same time they are portrayed in a completely different manners. Critics believe

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that this act of different manifestations of a single personality is just some sort of a

parody that Nabokov introduces to ridicule the tradition of the double in literature

(Moore 79).

Probably the crucial difference that serves as a trigger of the others is their

perception of the surrounding people, the world and their integration in society.

Humbert as mentioned before, is a writer, who loves to sit by the table and write into his

diary about his experiences and obscene desires for little nymphets. He stays true to the

written descriptions and this form of one's representation, where he can freely and

above all privately speak of everything he wishes to. ‗Private‘ is the key word, which

enormously contrasts with Quilty's portrayal. He on the contrary is a playwright,

unofficially also a pornographer, who does not mind his ideas, fantasies and desires to

be presented in front of the public. Quilty does not bother with hiding himself and what

he is, he is much more careless, dissolute and playful.

Quilty's character, in contrast to Humbert's, is well-depicted in the introductory

scene of the film, where they play ping pong. Humbert is stagnant, motionless and does

not participate in the game, although it is him possessing the gun. Quilty, on the other

side, the obvious loser in regards to his life, still manages to continue playing, joking

and eventually winning the set. There is even the metaphorical boundary between them

represented by the ping pong net. This matter of Humbert's stagnation is as well

accordingly depicted in Kubrick's film, where Quilty dances and has fun at the school

ball, whereas Humbert prefers standing or sitting on the spot and voyeuristically

observe people, especially Lolita.

The differences in the perception of certain aspects in a way Quilty and Humbert

do is also largely influenced by places they come from and which represent

backgrounds for both of them. Their lives are infiltrated by their own country, culture,

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habits, and education; which form their personalities. By emigrating from England to

America, Humbert gets into the contact with a new land, but also a new level of his own

imagination. From the beginning, he does not try to get used to the new land, culture

and society; he tends to fantasize about his own new world, which is neither England

nor America. He creates a place very much based on a seclusion from reality, on

constant moving from one city and hotel to another, perhaps to sort of blur for him the

rather unpleasant surroundings.

Throughout this process, which opens his eyes in the new imaginative way, yet

blinds him in terms of seeing the real events, the reader is kept with him and Lolita in

this built-up ivory tower and has only seldom the opportunity to perceive the situation

from the outside. The only rift in this space which allows not even the reader, but also

Humbert to do that, is Clare Quilty. Whenever Quilty appears, Humbert starts to

question reality, such as the possibility of police following them on their journey or a

quartet of psychologists nosing around his house and investigating. Involuntarily he

wakes up from his beautiful dream, has to face the unpleasant reality and wishes he

could just go back to ‗sleep‘ and continue dreaming.

That results in a development of deep paranoia, suspicion of practically

everyone around and eventually in even greater confusion, desperation and

estrangement from the world than before. As Moore believes, Quilty ―represents the

reality principle which torments the character [Humbert], and hangs over him as a

fiendish accusation, so long as Humbert the pseudo-artist remains oblivious to the

boundary between imagination and reality― (79). Even though it could be argued that

this imaginative and unreal character is actually Quilty, who is a ghost appearing now

and then always in a different role, hidden and unknown. That, however is again merely

a matter of perception, and in this case reader's perception if largely effected by the one

58
that the narration offers—Humbert's. The fact that Quilty was actually an opposite

proves the moment when Humbert finds a detailed description of him in a magazine

about famous actors, playwrights and producers offered by a jail's library, which says

―Quilty, Clare, American dramatist. Born in Ocean City, N.J., 1911. Educated at

Columbia University. Started on a commercial career but turned to playwriting. Author

of The Little Nymph, The Lady Who Loved Lightning (in collaboration with Vivian

Darkbloom), Dark Age, The strange Mushroom, Fatherly Love, and others‖ (31). His

fame and wide recognition even more emphasizes the fact of Humbert's unreliability

and inability to notice his surreal counterpart.

The duality of Humbert and Quilty is equally stressed in Kubrick's film

adaptation. Here, the audience can also see the clashing differences that make otherwise

pretty similar characters distinct—the contrast between Humbert's old English

conservativeness and highbrow manners; and a libertine-like, sarcastic and always

drunk experimentalist Quilty. There is a scene at the film's beginning, where Charlotte

speaks to him at the dance and ever since his first appearance, the audience is able to

notice his similarity with Humbert. He clearly does not recognize Charlotte, at least not

until she mentions showing him her garden—metaphorically Lolita—which just as in

Humbert's case was the only impressive aspect of her house. Afterwards he asks for

Lolita's name and describes it as ―a lovely, lyrical, lilting name‖ (Kubrick 26:49), which

is very much the poetic way, in which Humbert would describe it.

In regards to the contrast between England and America, Kubrick presents this

aspect from a broader sense and does not limit it to only Quilty, but it is the whole

America presenting these new modern values. The fitting example is provided by Jason

Lee's analysis of the scene at the ball:

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 Charlotte's friend Jean knowingly tells Humbert that she and John are

both broad-minded, implying a foursome with Humbert and Charlotte,

John rubbing his hands all over Humbert. Old-world and old-school

Humbert, nonphysical, repressed, and introverted, is contrasted with

these New World, sexually liberated extroverts. (111)

When Quilty appears at the veranda of Enchanted Hunters, he addresses

Humbert and talks about his appearance: ―I said to myself when I saw you, that's a guy

with the most normal-looking face I ever saw in my life‖ and then he starts comparing

himself to Humbert: ―It's great to see a normal face, because I'm a normal guy. Be great

for two normal guys like us to get together and talk about world events in a normal sort

of way‖ (Kubrick 1:20:21). After that he expresses his adoration of little Lolita and says

very hectically that ―She was really lovely. I wish I had a pretty, tall, lovely little girl

like that. Isn't it great to have a lovely, tall, pretty, little, small daughter like that. It's

really wonderful‖ (Kubrick1:20:52). By means of Quilty, Kubrick in this scene not only

successfully interweaves Nabokov's verbal playfulness, moreover he develops a bond

between the two consisting mainly of Lolita's adoration, and lastly he questions the

meaning of ‗normality‘ and indirectly encourages the audience to question what, in fact,

is to be considered normal.

The scene, where audience gets to see Quilty and Humbert interacting together

for the last time is the one at Humbert's house, when Quilty impersonates Dr Zempf. To

discuss this scene from a slightly different angle than it was in the fifth chapter and

focusing on its protagonists rather than on Lolita, offers another indication of duality.

Again, as in the previous scene on the veranda, Quilty merges them in his statement

―You and I, what are we? We are the symbols of power sitting in our offices. We are

making the signatures, writing the contracts and decisions all the time. But if we cast

60
our minds back, just think, what were we only yesterday?‖ (Kubrick 1:45:51) and

therefore puts them in an individual category, separated from the one where Lolita is,

from the one where basically everyone else is. In this scene, audience can again see a

game of ping pong, this time a metaphorical verbal ping pong that they play. They

clearly do not agree with each other's opinions and suggestions, yet both try to play this

game in the most smooth, polite and friendly way possible.

The duality in both Nabokov's and Kubrick's work is clearly very notable. In

comparison to Humbert's suggested duality with Annabel Leigh in the novel, the one

with Clare Quilty is much more well-thought-out, dynamic and playful. He serves not

only as an alter ego, but also as a representation of America, its culture and modern

American life, and the way Nabokov and Kubrick perceived them. His numerous

impersonations, particularly in the film, only strengthen the idea of Quilty's ability to

impersonate not only fabricated people like policeman, detective or a psychologist; but

also Humbert himself. The final act of their mergence in the moment of Quilty's death is

described by Nabokov as follows: ―We rolled all over the floor, in each other's arms,

like two huge helpless children. He was naked and goatish under his robe, and I felt

suffocated as he rolled over me. I rolled over him. We rolled over me. They rolled over

him. We rolled over us‖ (297).

7.2 Stanley Kubrick's Approach: Quilty as a Riddle

The importance of Clare Quilty for Kubrick's film is emphasized right from its

beginning. Not only the scene with Quilty's murder comes retrospectively as the first,

therefore the audience is familiar with this character sooner than they would normally

be when reading the novel; worth noting is as well the fact that the word ‗Quilty‘ is the

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first and the last word of the film. Even with the same scene Quilty embodies

boundaries of the whole picture and by that still he reminds audience of his everlasting

presence. Because of all these word games, strange impersonations and unexpected

occurrences; the audience starts to notice that Quilty himself is a game, a riddle and

driving force of the story's flow.

In the film, the character of Clare Quilty is portrayed by the actor Peter Sellers.

That introduces the first rather arguable fact of choosing an actor who is British to play

an American playwright. The next such aspect is the contrast in Sellers's and Quilty's

appearance. Quilty, as Humbert describes him as ― broad-backed man,baldish […] with

a small dark mustache‖ (216). Sellers's appearance however does not correspond with

any of these signs. One of the explanations of casting this actor is perhaps Stanley

Kubrick's close friendship with and fondness of him, which is probably a reason for

Sellers's further participation in Kubrick's works, such as playing the main role in Dr.

Strangelove produced two years after Lolita, where he also impersonates three different

roles. Although Sellers imitates American accent quite successfully in all scenes,

occasionally he still misses a word and creates a mixture that confuses not only

audience, but also Humbert himself.

Nonetheless, there are more speech patterns that he uses to confuse. At the

hotel's veranda he speaks very hastily, his speech is very disorganized,

incomprehensible and states too much information in a very short time. In another

scene, when he impersonates Dr Zempf, he simulates German accent of English

language and uses the typical ‗mit‘ instead of ‗with‘, or in most cases ignores English

way of pronouncing a consonant ‗r‘. This vide scale of speech and accent variations

helps Quilty to build up several different selves that interchangeably occur in the story

and encounter Humbert.

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 By means of these selves Quilty uncovers his identity, yet still plays the game of

presenting new faces. His advantage and ability to do this also consists of Humbert's

reluctance to notice him. In both novel and film, he has several opportunities to meet

him in person. In the novel, it was first at the school dance, then in the hotel's restaurant

where Lolita clearly reminds Humbert of his presence by saying ―Does not he look

exactly, but exactly, like Quilty?‖ (121). However Humbert does not feel him to be

important enough to bother himself with noticing his face, and overlooks him. The first

memory of his face comes from a much later period, when Quilty is already actively

following them. Humbert describes an encounter with ―the quiet pursuer‖ as ―the first

time I saw its driver quite clearly. I was proceeding slowly one afternoon through

torrents of rain and kept seeing that red ghost swimming and shivering with lust in my

mirror, when presently the deluge dwindled to a patter, and then was suspended

altogether‖ (216). The last opportunity, where he has a chance to see him representing

his real self, not impersonating anyone fictional was after the school play, where he

again misses him.

These aspects of Quilty's character make him interchangeably present and

absent, being himself or someone else, and emphasize the theme of him embodying the

riddle of the story, the one that raises most questions. In regard to this, Stanley Kubrick

says that ―it was apparent that just beneath the surface of the story was this strong

secondary narrative thread possible—because after Humbert seduces her in the motel,

or rather after she seduces him, the big question has been answered—so it was good to

have this narrative of mystery continuing after the seduction‖ (Southern 5). Therefore

he wished to avoid the possibility of creating a film, which in its midst, when the

audience's assumptions of what might happen to Humbert and Lolita get clear, starts to

63
decline and slowly becomes less and less interesting until it ends. Quilty and the whole

mystery around him keeps the tension of the story present for its whole duration.

Another aspect that is introduced in the movie along with Quilty is comicality, to

the extent that it very much exceeds its level in the novel. The novel is much more the

story of love and romance, than the story of humorous situations, though they are

present. The fact that Kubrick was restricted in addressing love, which is very closely

connected to eroticism, he decided to give the film a new force of a totally different

kind and made it a black comedy. Pauline Kael claims that ―The surprise of Lolita is

how enjoyable it is: it's the first new American comedy since those great days in the

forties when Preston Sturges recreated comedy with verbal slapstick. Lolita is black

slapstick and at times it's so far out that you gasp as you laugh‖ (qtd. In Phillips 147)

and Stanley Kubrick adds ―Well, that aspect of the picture interests me very much […] I

mean like a comic nightmare, and I think that Sellers in the murder scene, and in fact in

the whole characterization, is like something out of a bad dream, but a funny one. I'm

very pleased with the way that came off‖ (Southern 5).

Quilty's riddle-like character is also highlighted by film's camera. Stanley

Kubrick pays a great attention to the work with camera and does not perceive it as

merely a tool for capturing scenes and creating a film. A camera for him is a medium,

through which it is manageable to send a message to the audience or evoke a feeling

without the necessity of its explicit portrayal. Kubrick saw a great talent in Peter Sellers

and he particularly appreciated his ability to act like a chameleon, to adapt himself into

every situation and every character and nicely fuse with the background (LoBrutto 204).

For that reason, he decided to expand his character and make him appear in more scenes

and for longer time than he normally would have.

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 In the scene following Lolita's leave for Camp Climax, he goes into her room,

sits on her bed and sniffs her clothes and pillows. After he reads the love-letter from

Charlotte and bursts out laughing, he lies down and the camera shifts away from his

face and focuses on the poster glued on the wall right next to Lolita's bed. On this

poster, there is an advertisement for Dromes cigarettes, presenting a famous playwright

Clare Quilty. It is an excellent example of how a camera's focus can point out Humbert's

inability to notice the important without saying it. As Nelson notes ―Kubrick's camera

reminds us of darker forces waiting in Humbert's future‖ (69). Moreover, it highlights

he fact that Quilty, though he is not physically present, is always there, hidden and

waiting for the right moment to appear.

Another such instance of an unusual camera positioning, which allows audience

to see Quilty when Humbert does not, occurs when he leans against the fence of hotel's

veranda and talks to Humbert. He stands turning his back towards Humbert and camera

is positioned right in front of Quilty's face, which therefore covers significantly more

space of its scope, than Humbert's face does. Audience can see him in detail, while a

rather tiny Humbert just curiously peeps from his behind and reluctantly, not-knowingly

answers his questions. In the next scene, Quilty impersonates Dr Zempf. The scene is

opened by turning on the lights, which is an initial sign of unraveling. Afterwards,

though Quilty masks himself with a grown mustache and obscure glasses, he offers

Humbert a cigarette and tells him to keep the pack, therefore he again gives Humbert

another hint. Naturally, he pulls out Dromes, which is visibly depicted by the camera.

Kubrick's colleague Marlon Brando said that ―Stanley is unusually perceptive

and delicately attuned to people. He has an adroit intellect and is a creative thinker, not

a repeater, not a fact-gatherer. He digests what he learns and brings to a new project an

original point of view and a reserved passion‖ (Southern 4). This only affirms Kubrick's

65
willingness to bring innovation and originality rather than explicitness into his films.

Thus also thanks to Peter Sellers and his portrayal of Clare Quilty, he had a chance to

accomplish these aims.

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 8 Charlotte Haze

This chapter deals with the character of Charlotte Haze – Lolita's mother and is

divided into two subchapters. The first is dedicated to Charlotte's portrayal in the novel

as well as the film and analyses the interconnection of her character with Lolita's. The

second subchapter analyses how aspects such as comicality and jokes are connected to

the character of Charlotte and expressed via her.

8. 1 Charlotte's Portrayal and Her Interconnection with Lolita

The portrayal of Charlotte Haze in the novel is, just like portrayals of Lolita and

Quilty, in Humbert's power. When he comes to Charlotte's house to have a look at the

room, he immediately knows he is not going to take the offer and states that ―there was

no question of my settling there‖ (37). However, when he sees Lolita, he immediately

changes his opinion and accepts it. Therefore right from the initial moment of their first

encounter he says ‗no‘ to Charlotte and ‗yes‘ to Lolita; and that notion stays unchanged

until the very end. The only way of getting into contact with Lolita, being Charlotte's

pre-pubescent child, was through her mother. From the very beginning is it notable that

in Humbert's perception, Charlotte is and always will be an obstacle, which is the term

he uses quite often, when describing her in his diary. Pejorative expressions and

negative attitude towards Charlotte that he presents to the readers such as ―the Haze

woman, the big bitch, the old cat, the obnoxious mamma‖ (95), evoke the generally

negative perception of her character. Thus they actually tend to see her as dull, annoying

and disgusting woman; even though it naturally might be only one of Humbert's

misjudgments.

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 This representation of Charlotte creates more possible theories of what her

character really is like, depending on Humbert's trustworthiness or the opposite. To take

his evaluations as truthful, one of the main Charlotte's roles in the story really is that of

an obstacle, a jealous mother, who cannot stand her daughter to be more attractive for

her loved one that she herself. This is a model previously encountered in several fairy-

tales, such as Snow White of Cinderella, where the villain mother tries to do everything

against her daughter (or stepdaughter) pursuing happiness. As Lee believes, ―there is the

common theme of the daughter functioning as a youthful replacement for the older

mother‖ (106). This take is however, by applying it on the story of Lolita, rather

simplified, since in Lolita there are many other important aspects to be taken in

consideration. In the situation when Charlotte finds Humbert's diary and yells at him

―You‘re a monster. You‘re a detestable, abominable, criminal fraud. If you come near—

I‘ll scream out the window‖ (95), this action is more likely to be perceived through the

glasses that Humbert puts in front of reader's eyes, and therefore that it is just another of

her unreasonable attention-seeking behavior. Only rarely the reader would take into

account a possibility of a moral principle that could then serve as a reason and

justification of her acts.

Consequently, the relationship of Lolita and Charlotte based on Humbert's

representation of it, becomes a competition for Humbert. Sometimes the competition

escalates to the extent that to the reader their representation is considered as two

enemies, rather than a mother and her child. Charlotte can also be perceived as an older

version of her daughter, who sees her younger self in Lolita and reminisces and misses

the past times. To Humbert however, as he says ―I was aware that mother Haze hated

my darling for her being sweet on me. So I planned my lake day with a view to

satisfying the mother‖ (53), she is more of an embodiment of envy and jealousy, and at

68
the same time someone undesirable that from time to time has to be satisfied, in order to

provide an excuse for Lolita's and Humbert's mutual affection.

The depiction of Charlotte's relationship with her daughter in Kubrick's film can

be considered as quite common between parent and a pre-teen child. Lolita's

stubbornness, resentment and ignorance towards practically anything Charlotte does or

asks her to do, are causes of most arguments presented. Their relationship is certainly

not presented as a positive one, but it is not an unusual one either. It is interesting that in

the scenes where Charlotte's intentions with Humbert are obvious and he already acts

like Lolita's father, her overall attitude towards him is much more respectable.

Furthermore, the aspect of competition between Charlotte and her daughter is likewise

depicted in the film, as Lee describes an early scene, when while watching a movie

―Lolita places her hand on his knee, Charlotte places her hand on his leg, Humbert

places his on top of Lolita's, she places her hand on top of his, then Charlotte places her

hand on what she hopes is Humbert's paw but is instead her daughter's‖ (110). The hand

action is not followed by any verbal commentary, only by Charlotte's look, after which

they immediately stop holding and keep watching. Although Charlotte's portrayal by

Shelley Winters is mostly very loud and theatrical, some of her non-verbal participation,

such as this particular look, are often more powerful and suggestive than the verbal

ones.

In both novel and film, Charlotte's character is also important for pointing out

the relationships and characteristic features of others, especially Lolita's. Probably the

most resonating and significant is her death, that in the novel closes its first part and

likewise in the film it is apparent that this event serves as an important milestone in

Lolita's life. After the revelation of Charlotte's death, Lolita's attitude towards Humbert

radically changes and makes her rethink and realize what her current life situation is

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like. Up to this moment, she lives her life easily, with fun and optimism and above all,

she does not take her relationship with Humbert as a very serious matter, therefore does

not spend much time thinking about its perversion. Even though Charlotte is not with

them for a longer time when Lolita finds out about her death, she still has that thought

of her existence and she still somehow relies upon her in case something unpleasant

happens.

This also points at Lolita's childlike tendency to think that parents would solve

every problem that kids got themselves into. After her realization of sudden aloneness,

Lolita starts to be rude and grumpy in Humbert's presence and often rejects to do what

he orders. Before Charlotte's death and their mutual estrangement, there was naturally a

big gap between them being secret and unusual, and Charlotte representing rather

commonness of people. By the time, this gap is transformed and starts to widen between

Lolita and Humbert. The more Lolita feels annoyed with Humbert, despises him and

wants to escape, the more he desires to possess her. After a while Humbert describes

Lolita's realization and says ―It had become gradually clear to my conventional Lolita

during our singular and bestial cohabitation that even the most miserable of family lives

was better than the parody of incest, which, in the long run, was the best I could offer

the waif‖ (286).

8.2 Comedy, Ambiguity and Subtextual Jokes

Another aspect closely connected to the character of Charlotte Haze is

comicality and its representation in both novel and film. In the novel, all passages of

ridiculing Charlotte or making fun of her are expressed in Humbert's thoughts and diary

confessions, but never publicly, until the moment when she herself reads his diary out

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loud. However, to preserve this subject in the film and keep it equally emphasized,

Kubrick had to place it in a different sphere, since Humbert's thoughts and personal

memoirs are almost never presented. For Kubrick, Charlotte who is portrayed as a rather

simple-minded woman is therefore a perfect medium for subtextual, non-explicit joking,

yet still highlighting the overall notion of a comedy. As Nelson claims ―Shelley Winters

plays a perfect foil to the comic exaggerations of Sellers's Quilty and the vulgarity of

Sue Lyon's Lolita‖ (64).

The first scene with such ambiguous commentaries occurs in the scene of

playing chess. The game of chess is here closely connected to the verbal game that both

Charlotte and Humbert play. As Abrams says ―while reaching Charlotte to play,

Humbert says, rather pleased with himself, ‗Yes, that can leap over other pieces‘—just

as he, Humbert, can simply ‗leap over‘ Charlotte to get to Lolita‖ (120). The rather

explicit and therefore even funnier to be found in such strictly controlled picture is

Charlotte's desperate question ―You're going to take my queen?‖ (Kubrick 19:30), which

basically means taking Lolita. He answers ―That was my intention, certainly.‖ (Kubrick

19:33), thereupon Lolita comes to the scene and kisses both of them on cheeks.

Another such instance, where a subtext joke appears is at the school dance where

Charlotte tells Quilty that on Wednesday Lolita ―is going to have a cavity filled by your

uncle Ivor‖ (Kubrick 26:59). Here, the audience can see the notion of this and all

following jokes coming from Charlotte. Quilty immediately starts laughing, because

there indeed is a very explicit reference to oral sex. These jokes and seemingly

ambiguous statements that are used throughout the whole film always tend to be clear to

the audience and all characters involved except for Charlotte, who is their addresser.

Eventually, even Charlotte's death is took by Humbert and also generally

presented as a joke, as nothing very serious, but in fact the contrary. As Abrams notes,

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Humbert instead or mourning his wife's death, or even being remotely sad about it ―is

enjoying Charlotte's death and plotting how to have sex with Lolita‖ (118). Abrams's

statement is perhaps a bit oversimplified, but indeed sums up Humbert's future

intentions quite accurately. As Nelson points out, the scenes in bedrooms and bathrooms

―indicate the film's highly developed use of studio-bound settings to express the comic

and tragic modalities of a psychological/sexual content‖ and ―come together as an

expression of primal irony‖ (6). And of course it is a bathroom, where Humbert

celebrates his sudden fortune of Charlotte's disappearance from his life, and fantasizes

about the future pleasurable moments with Lolita.

When Southern questioned Kubrick about the usage of these ambiguous jokes

and censorship's acceptance of them, he said that ―the general public is a good deal

more sophisticated than most censors imagine‖ (6) which is because ―for the past few

years, they've been getting used to better and better movies‖ (6). The censorship's

underestimation of audience's intelligence and wit therefore led to the possibility to

ambiguously address the sexual subjects, which were normally strictly forbidden, and

moreover to present an irony, satire and tragicomicality which eventually emphasizes

the comedic genre of the film.

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 9 Conclusion

When talking about Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov emphasized that story's primary

theme is not perversity, a sick relationship between older guy and pre-pubescent girl, or

even a ridicule of America. These aspects are indeed all present, nevertheless the main

theme as he established it is love, however strange, unconventional or difficult to

understand. In general, love is a very complicated aspect of everyone's life and

explaining it to someone as a definition of the term is even more complicated. That is

mainly because as a term, it is very fluid and every person assigns it, at least to some

extent, a different meaning. On grounds of that lies transferring of a love story from a

book to a film. This is alongside with other important elements, such as introduction of

the whole new medium, unfavorable cultural background or personal directorial

preferences, inseparably connected to Stanley Kubrick's production.

The result of the analyses provided by the thesis reached to several important

results. By the thorough study of the cultural background, censorship and moral values

of society, the thesis acknowledges the significant influence of these aspects on the final

cinematographic work. However, by the spotted usage of irony, subtextual jokes and

comicality, the director Stanley Kubrick succeeds in not only easing the film's

atmosphere, but above all creates a medium, through which he can seemingly

unobtrusively address some of the restricted topics. Thus the film does not seem as if it

lacked morality, rather it is presented as ―the logic and delight of games‖ (Bordo 306).

By depicting several examples from the second adaptation directed by Adrian Lyne,

Kubrick's adaptation proves that even though the second one could allow to have Lolita

more vulgar and precocious, Lolita of the sixties is considering the times of its

production still very sexually knowing.

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 The analysis of the four main protagonists of this story explained their roles in

the story, their mutual relationships, influences and interconnections; and subsequently

compared them to their cinematographic counterparts. The result of this comparative

analysis represent a crucial aspect in audience's perception of the individual characters

and of the story as a whole. Moreover, the thesis comes to a conclusion that one of the

decisive factors determining person's perception of the film is undoubtedly his prior

knowledge of the novel. Therefore ―viewers unfamiliar with Nabokov's masterpiece (or

whose memory of the book has been dimmed by time)‖ (Bordo 313) are unlikely to

recognize many of the important differences, and therefore it is primarily Kubrick's

interpretation of the story that anchors in one's mind.

Although the thesis may seem fragmented, because of its focus on several

different parts, scenes and aspects of the story, I believe that each of these was given

equal and adequate attention, therefore the result of the provided analyses led the thesis

to the desired acknowledgment of its aims.

The story of Lolita is complex, uneasy and even fifty years, two adaptations and

many social and cultural changes later, it still presents a story that depicts a kind of

human behavior that people find either saddening, repulsive, or in some cases

understandable; however always in some respect disturbing. The nature of the topics it

presents, such as pedophilia, child abuse and incest generally does not represent

something that people would like to face or deal with, yet oftentimes are an inevitable

part of human lives.

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 Bibliography

Primary Sources

Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. London: Penguin Books, 1997, Print.

Lolita. Dir. Stanley Kubrick. Perf. James Mason, Sue Lyon, Peter Sellers, and Shelley

Winters. Seven Arts Productions, 1962. Film.

Secondary Sources

Abrams, Jerold J. The Philosophy of Stanley Kubrick. Lexington: The University Press

of Kentucky, 2009, Print.

Bertram, John. ―The Land of Metaphor: John Gall on Designing the Cover of Lolita.‖

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Black, Gregory D. The Catholic Crusade Against the Movies, 1940-1975. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1998, Print.

Bordo, Susan. The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private. New York:

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999, Print.

Crowther, Bosley. ―‗Lolita,‘ Vladimir Nabokov's Adaptation of His Novel.‖ New York

Times, 14 Jun. 1962. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.

Doherty, Thomas Patrick. Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in

American Cinema 1930-1934. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999, Print.

Falsetto, Mario. Stanley Kubrick: A Narrative and Stylistic Analysis. Westport: Praeger,

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Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. London: Routledge, 2006, Print.

Jacobs, Christopher. ―The Production Code of 1930.‖ University of North Dakota. Web.

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Jones, Adair. ―Vladimir Nabokov & Lionel Trilling discuss ‗Lolita‘.‖ WordPress, 27

Feb. 2012. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.

Kaylor, Michael Matthew. "A Lecture on The Quest for Corvo." Department of English

and American Studies, Brno. 24 Apr. 2014. Lecture.

Lee, Jason. Celebrity, Pedophilia, and Ideology in American Culture. Amherst: Cambria

Press, 2009, Print.

Leff, Leonard J. The Dame in the Kimono: Hollywood, Censorship, and the Production

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Lewis, Jon. Hollywood v. Hard Core: How the Struggle Over Censorship Created the

Modern Film Industry. New York: NYU Press, 2002, Print.

LoBrutto, Vincent. Stanley Kubrick: A Biography. Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 1999,

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Lolita. Dir. Adrian Lyne. Perf. Jeremy Irons, Melanie Griffith, and Dominique Swain.

Lolita Productions, 1997. Film.

Lothe, Jakob. Narrative in Fiction and Film: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford

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McNally, Terrence. ―An operatic mission: Freshen the familiar.‖ New York Times 1 Sep.

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Naiman, Eric. Nabokov, Perversely. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010, 320 p. Print.

Nelson, Thomas. Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze. Bloomington: Indiana

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Patnoe, Elizabeth. ―Lolita Misrepresented, Lolita Reclaimed: Disclosing the Doubles.‖

College Literature 22.2 (1995): 81-104. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.

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Phelan, James. ―Estranging Unreliability, Bonding Unreliability, and the Ethics of

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 Resumé (English)

The thesis provides a comparative analysis of Vladimir Nabokov's famous novel Lolita

and the film adaptation directed by Stanley Kubrick. Thesis is divided into six main

chapters. The first introduces both authors and presents the important as well as

interesting details about their lives, styles and individual ways of dealing with the story

of Lolita. Afterwards, the thesis deals with the matter of social and cultural background

of the time and points out the most significant factors influencing the creations of both

works. The remaining four parts are dedicated to the analysis of the four main

characters of the story – Lolita, Humbert Humbert, Clare Quilty and Charlotte Haze.

The thesis depicts various scenes and aspects directly connected to the main

protagonists and compares them to their cinematographic counterparts portrayed by Sue

Lyon, James Mason, Peter Sellers and Shelley Winters. On grounds of the comparisons,

the thesis further analyses the significant changes, omissions, additions as well as

similarities of the story's filmic reconstruction. Further, it tries to examine the possible

reasons for such phenomena and decides in what ways do they eventually influence

audience's perception of both works.

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 Resumé (Czech)

Tato práce představuje srovnávací analýzu slavného románu Vladimira Nabokova,

Lolity a jeho filmové adaptace režírované Stanleym Kubrickem. Práce je rozdělena do

šesti hlavních kapitol. První kapitola představuje oba autory a podáva důležité a rovněž

zajímavé informace o jejich životech, stylech a jednotlivých způsobech zacházení s

analyzovaným dílem. Následně se práce zabývá záležitostmi týkajícimi se

společenského a kulturního pozadí a poukazuje na nejpodstatnější okolnosti ovlyvňující

tvůrčí procesy obou děl. Zbylé čtyři části jsou věnovány analýze čtyř hlavních postav

románu, kterými jsou Lolita, Humbert Humbert, Clare Quilty a Charlotte Hazeová.

Práce popisuje různé scény a aspekty přímo propojené s hlavními protagonisty a

porovnává je s jejich filmovými protějšky ztvářnenými Sue Lyonovou, Jamesem

Masonem, Peterem Sellersem a Shelley Wintersovou. Na základě těchto srovnání práce

dále analyzuje podstatné změny, vynechání, dodatky a také podobnosti ve filmové

adaptaci. Dále práce zkoumá možné důvody výskytu těchto jevů a rozhoduje, jak

případně ovlyvňují divákovo vnímání obou děl.

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