Post #5: Critical Lens Expert - eddie eaton

I chose to analyze through the feminist lens while reading Lolita. For this reason, I looked at the article: "Lolita Reclaimed: Disclosing the Doubles," in which the author, Elizabeth Patnoe explains how Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is harmful to society and promotes the abuse of women. It also covers stereotypes of female characters in common literary works. I both agreed and disagreed with many of the ideas presented in the article, but each idea both informed and educated me on some of the views I should consider when reading through the feminist lens.

One theme of the article is how the silence of women's opinions and punishment of sexual expression in females is perpetuated in Vladimir's Lolita. Because the author of the article is a woman, it showed me how some women may feel when reading Lolita. It states how the victimization of Humbert's character while he was sexually abusing Lolita justifies the act of the abuse itself in the minds of readers. She cites her personal experience of class discussions as evidence, saying that in an equal part male and female class, males dominated the talk and "silenced" women in the classroom. Anytime a claim was made against Humbert that denounced his pedophilia, it was met with numerous voices of opposition from men defending and relating to Humbert that justified the abusive actions. For this reason, the book is harmful, especially to young readers, because it teaches the idea that abusing women sexually is normal.

Another idea was that it denounced woman who sexually expressed themselves while glorifying men that did. For example, the book constantly rewards Humbert for communicating his interest in molesting Lolita, while the book ends in death for Lolita when she expresses herself as a "sexual creature." This also shows the maternal/whore double stereotype for female characters in literary novels. It states that women can be caring and motherly, such as Charlotte, Lolita's mom, who isn't expressed sexually in many ways in the novel, or hyper sexualized whores, such as Lolita, who was consistently objectified and sexualized throughout the story.  For this reason the book is also harmful because it favors men above women in terms of sexual expression and limits women to expressing themselves in two ways.

Although I liked the substance in the article, I feel like some thoughts were over analyzed and came across as silly. For example, when talking about one of the instances of Herbert's sexual abuse of Lolita, Humbert refers to Lolita altering his life when she touched him and that his life was different than that of other boys. Elizabeth claims that the word "life" in this context is a metaphor for penis:

"Within the dominant, more figurative reading, life is a metaphor for penis. As such, the line 'My life was handled by little Lo in an energetic, matter-of-fact manner as if it were an insensate gadget uncon nected with me' suggests a description of Lolita's genital fondling of Humbert, and "she was not quite prepared for certain discrepancies between a kid's life and mine" may refer to size differences in children and adults.

Although the first analysis does make sense in that he alluded to his penis by referring to the word "life," there is no way that saying his life was different than the lives of young boys meant the author was trying to communicate penis size. Although I did not agree with this point as much as the others, it was entertaining to read and helped me grow in the way to look for metaphors when describing sexual events.