Lolita Through a Marxist-Feminist Lens Lolita by...

Lolita Through a Marxist-Feminist Lens After looking past its controversial sexual nature, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita can be read as a criticism of the capitalist system. Nabokov uses the relationship between the novels narrator, Humbert Humbert, and the novels namesake, Lolita, as an extended metaphor to showcase the systems inherent exploitive nature in a way that shocks the reader out of their false consciousness, by making the former a man in the position of power - a repulsive, manipulative pedophile — and the latter a young female victim — as well as a spoiled, vapid, unruly child. Each is to the other nothing more than a commodity — Lolita being the perfect consumer and Humbert Humbert being a man of privilege who views others†¦show more content†¦However, Humbert Humbert’s arrogance causes him to hold himself above all others, except when hes trying to charm the reader with his false modesty — but it is transparent. By making his narrator so vulgarly arrogant, Nabokov is revealing the capitalist persona he’s created, leaving the reader disenchanted with Humbert Humbert and his charm. Humbert Humbert arrives in Ramsdale with a small amount of money from his deceased rich American uncle and Lolita is instantly taken with his Hollywood good-looks. She was raised in a middle class house, where putting on airs of being wealthier and more sophisticated than one truly is — traits which Humbert Humbert actually possesses — was taught to her by a single, uninterested mother. Lolita is by nature at the bottom of the hierarchy because of her sex and her age, as well as the fact that the reader only sees her through the narrators gaze, but her consumerism makes her restraint all the more difficult to overcome. She is a modern child, an avid reader of movie magazines, an expert in dream-slow close-ups, (49) which gave her unrealistic expectations of love’s value and places her squarely in the object position. Lolita finds solace in material things, objects with no true use or value: movies, movie magazines, stylish clothes, etc., Kinsey 3 and throws tantrums on a regular basis. She had thrown one