1st Paper: Humbert's Femme Fatale

Humbert Humbert, the not so reliable narrator of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, is not only a somewhat offensive pedophile, but a creator. Humbert and Lolita, the nymphet who becomes the apple of his eye, take on the role of two primary characters in his story, and together take a fantastical journey across the United States and boundaries of morality. By incorporating elements of numerous fairy tales and myths into his own experiences, he creates a unique story of love and obsession. One of the myths that he, somewhat ironically, peppers throughout the novel, particularly in character of Lolita, is that of the biblical genesis. Lolita is characterized repeatedly throughout the novel as the very first femme fatale, the one temptress who instigated the fall of all men, Eve.

Humber Humbert evokes the image of Eve in the Garden of Eden from the very moment he glimpses Lolita for the first time. The instant he walks into “the breathless garden” (Nabokov, 40) he is struck by the beauty of Lolita. At this point in his mind she is still innocent and seeing as he has “a gross liking for the fruit vert” (Nabokov, 40), he falls head over heels for her. She becomes an obsession for him. He frequently dreams of intimacy between them and stays in the Haze house only to be close to his Lolita. Although he arranges for them to spend as much time in the same vicinity as possible, it is not until later that he takes a nibble of the forbidden fruit.

“God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die" (Genesis 3:3). Although Humbert does not enjoy the “forbidden fruit,” Lolita’s body in this case, to the fullest extent on their first encounter, he does touch make the mistake of touching it. This action occurs in the living room while Humbert and Lolita are alone, and is perhaps the most obvious allusion to Eve in the entirety of the novel. Not only is Lolita “holding in her hallowed hands a beautiful, banal, Eden-red apple”, but she “grasped it and bit into it” (Nabokov, 58). This is a very obvious allusion to Eve, who first ate of the forbidden apple. He also calls Lolita “apple-sweet” in the same passage, intimating that he has had just a taste of the sweet juice. It is after this that, while moving her body to a song, Humbert brings himself to climax, and therefore has nibbled the forbidden fruit of Eve and begun the infamous fall.

Humbert finds himself in a similar situation in the Enchanted Hunters Hotel, where he initially plans on putting Lolita in a deep sleep before taking advantage of her, but in the end doesn’t. However, rather than claiming responsibility for the situation he places the blame on Lolita. He says to the reader, “I am going to tell you something very strange: it was she who seduced me” (Nabokov, 132). This evokes the image of Adam placing the blame on Eve or eating the forbidden fruit, for like Lolita, she seduced him. In this point in the Bible Adam said to God, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate" (Genisis 3:12). Like Adam does with Eve, Humbert characterizes Lolita as a temptress who seduces him into the act of intercourse. It also intimates that he would not have done it, but he could not muster the power to resist the temptation put before him by his lover. For the first time takes a full bite of the forbidden fruit, and he and Lolita’s fates are sealed.

Upon reflecting on that night, Humbert says this, “I should have known (by the signs made to me by something in Lolita—the real child Lolita or the angel behind her back) that nothing but pain and horror would result from the expected rapture” (Nabokov, 125). The fall has occurred, and things slowly go downhill for Humbert. His obsession continues, but the two begin to fight, and although he continues to submit power over her, she openly objects. As Eve began to think for herself and consider her desires as well, so does Lolita, ultimately causing Humbert to become dejected. He realizes that “there was in her garden […] regions which happened to be forbidden to me” (Nabokov, 84). He also notes that they are living in a “world of total evil.” The world, his wondrous “nymphetland” has lost much of its allure, and Humbert is left dreaming of the past.

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta” (Nabokov, 9). Although Eve is not technically Adam’s sin, it was her that brought it on him. Lolita not only causes Humbert, in a way, to sin, she is in fact his sin. This is one aspect of his story that differs from Genesis. By the end I think that he realizes, perhaps, that Lolita was not so much like the temptress Eve that he evokes through much of the story, but the innocent and curious Eve. She was a young female who wanted to experience knew things and gain knowledge of the world. She was lead to do this in a unorthodox way, by a troubled man. If Lolita is Eve, then Humbert is the snake that tempted her in the first place, and I think he begins to realize this.