Can Humbert ever be said to “love” Lolita? Does he ever perceive her as a separate being? Is the reader ever permitted to see her in ways that Humbert cannot?
There is only a brief glimpse of Delores with her friends at school, which doesn’t reveal anything but that she is indulged and spoiled. I think Humbert perceives her as HIS being, over whom he wants total control. He seems to always be afraid she will get away, or say something about their relationship. So, in that sense, she was separate. Humbert loved the sex acts she performed at first. But after spending time with her, became to love the person. That’s why, when she went off with Quilty, he tried so hard to find her. If she was just a sex object, he would have found another 12 year old.
A narcissist views everyone else from their projection as their worthiness to be in their world. Lolita was HIS and until or unless she destroyed that projection she would always be his and in his world.
1 Like
I don’t think he knows a thing about Dolores. She’s nothing more than an object to be used and discarded.
As a reader, we get a few peeks into her as a real person - for example when she sobs every night. But generally, no, since we’re viewing her from HH’s POV.
Humbert did not know what love is, or was. He only knew lust and fantasy. When he saw her pregnant may have been the first time he actually saw her as a separate being. Even then, he tried to convince her to come with him so he could essentially pull her back into his world. She came into her own when she decided to run away from him, when she contacted him for financial assistance, when she met with him and her husband, and when she refused to go with him at that time. Even then, he tried to get her back within his control.
HH thinks he loves Lo, but I don’t think he understands the obsession is not love. He seems to recognize in the closing pages of the book that he had used Lo and harmed her, but he continues to make it all about him by pursuing Quilty.
Humbert “loves” Lolita only in a distorted, possessive sense. His love is for his fantasy, not for her.
He sees her as separate only fleetingly, near the end, and even then, imperfectly.
The reader sees her differently. Nabokov ensures that while Humbert narrates, the truth of Lolita emerges between his lines, allowing readers to glimpse the real child he never truly sees.
The tension between Humbert’s narration and the reality it obscures is part of what makes Lolita both morally unsettling and stylistically brilliant.