He documents the entire affair in elaborate detail. Writing about the girl's pleas for help, attempts to get away, reaction to being raped, etc. as if she is toying with him, he views himself the victim. Her emotions are her playing hard to get. Her attempts to push him off during her rape are a twisted form a foreplay. He passes off scratches on his body as a wild night. She tries to bring other people into the situation to make the rape stop and he pulls her to a new location.
Through the constant movement, he has now isolated the girl from everyone and everything. No one knows who she is or what is happening. He portrays them on a father - daughter trip, paints her off as a moody teenager and attempts to keep his actions from getting out.
As time goes on, he starts to complain. He is growing tired of her, she is getting too old, and so this man contemplates impregnating her so he will have someone else to abuse when he is done with his current victim.
Now, imagine that instead of hearing all of this and feeling disgust - people look on this man with pity. How dare the young girl toy with him, how dare she play with his emotions and lead him down this emotional roller coaster! People say she wanted it and she is responsible for his anguish. This story is painted as a love story, and the 12 year old victim becomes a 12 year old vixen who was really in control of her years of being raped by an older man.
Sounds impossible? It's not. It's the plot of one of the most read stories of all time.
I first read Lolita right after college. Being that I'd been in the anti-trafficking, stop violence towards women, end sexual assault movement for years even then, I was shocked that a book like this was able to be considered a "classic" and hailed as a love story.
There is nothing loving about the rape of a twelve year old girl.
- Lolita - a girl who is kidnapped and raped by a man who came into her life as a stepfather figure, for three years.
- Lolita - a girl whose name has become equated with "a sexually precocious, flirtatious underage girl who invites the attention of older men despite her young age. A Lolita now implies a young girl who is sexy, despite her pigtails and lollipops, and who teases men even though she is supposed to be off-limits." (Koa Beck)
- Lolita - a girl's story that is misunderstood, like so many other child abuse victims, for reasons that place responsibility on her instead of her abuser - Humbert Humbert.
Everything "Lolita" has become associated with is everything that is wrong with the story. The lack of disgust to the story only reveals how twisted the story is. Humbert is never held responsible for his actions, he is not painted as a pedophile/rapist, but a lovestruck man tricked by a 12 year old girl.
Dolores is 12 - and is in no way responsible for what Humbert raped her. No child can seduce an adult. Instead of being hailed as "the only convincing love story of our century. (Vanity Fair)," this book should be looked at as a rare glimpse into the mind of a pedophile and the lies that keep them going.
"Because the lecherous Humbert has couched his pedophilia in romantic language, the young girl he repeatedly violated seems to have passed through into pop culture as a tween temptress rather than a rape victim.Conflating love or sexiness with the rape of literature’s most misunderstood child is dangerous in that it perpetuates the mythology that young girls are some how participating in their own violation. That they are instigating these attacks by encouraging and inciting the lust of men with their flirty demeanor and child-like innocence. (Koa Beck)
Lolita - the 1 year old rape victim the world blamed and forgot. And she isn't the only one. (1, 2, 3, 4)
