Billy Berger-Bailey

12/16/17
Global Drama in Context
Mfoniso Udofia
Lolita Adapted: A Successful Failure Commented [MV1]: Name, date, etc should be double
spaced according to MLA!

The play Lolita by Edward Albee, based off on the book by Vladimir Nabokov,

deals with the hot button topic of pedophilia. The original story made many of its

first readers so uncomfortable that American publishers flat out refused to publish

the novel at its conception; its first printing was in France. The book addresses

pedophilia as it exists in a cultural context in the United States of America. The

ornate language employed by Nabokov surrounding such an abhorrent topic leaves

its reader befuddled. The prose must be admired although the subject is enough to

leave any right-minded person ill-at-ease; this is what makes the book so potent.

The theatrical adaptation by Edward Albee tells the same story without the

distraction of Nabokov’s gorgeous wordsmithery. In present day, America’s problem

with pedophilia and sexual assault is still glaring. Albee’s Lolita gives us a clear

window to peer through in order to examine how assault and pedophilia are still as

prevalent as they are. Lolita would be a prime American play to add to our canon in

Global Drama in Context.

Humbert Humbert (abbreviated by Albee as HH) is a British English

professor and writer who, after the termination of a loveless marriage, moves to the

United States to become an English teacher at a private University. He confesses

that he is presupposed to pedophilia, as he is still hung up on a girl he loved when he

was in his early adolescence who died shortly afterwards. He rents a room in a

house from a woman whose young daughter Dolores incites HH’s passion. Dolores,

proclaimed by Humbert to be a ‘nymphet’ (a word Nabokov coined), who Humbert

nicknames Lolita, becomes the object of HH’s obsession. When Lolita’s mother

Charlotte confesses her love for Humbert, Humbert he must choose between

marrying Lo’s mother or never seeing his beloved again. While Lolita is at sleep Commented [MV2]: You could make it more clear here
that he actually did make the decision to marry Charlotte
away camp, Charlotte finds Humbert’s journal of his perverted musings; she

becomes hysterical, falls down the stairs and dies, leaving Humbert in complete

control of his dear Lolita. Humbert picks Lolita up from camp without informing her

of her mother’s sudden death and, after breaking the news, they travel around the

country sleeping together in various hotel rooms. Later, Lo falls ill, and while she is

at the hospital, she is “kidnapped” by Clare Quilty, her former tutor. It is later

revealed that Lolita begged Quilty to save her because she was actually in love with

him. Humbert doesn’t hear from Lo again till until she is 17 years old, married to a

man named Dick, pregnant and in desperate need of money . Humbert finds Lolita

and professes his love for her. Lolita tells Humbert about her time with the impotent

Clare Quilty, whom she loved, but who coaxed her into being a sex slave of sorts.

Humbert then finds and violently kills Quilty, and as he is waiting for the Police to

arrest him for the murder, the pain of his now forever unrequited love floods back

to to him, which is manifested in a physical release on the the cold hard floor.

Despite its substance, the novel Lolita has been thought by many to be one of

greatest love stories of the 20th century. Pedophilia and the masculine gaze lie at the

heart of this story. The reason the that this book is so highly regarded has more to

do with the brilliance of its author than it does to do with the story he tells. Nabokov

writes so eloquently that he is able to convince his audience that Humbert’s

affections are legitimate and true rather than wrong, sadistic and perverted. In a
1955 interview with Nabokov, the interviewer Lionel Trilling asserts that, “It is not a

book so much about an aberration as about an actual love, and a love that makes all

the terrible demands that almost any love makes...that is very full of compassion as

well as passion”. (JiffySpook).” In this quote Trilling insists that Humbert’s

affections are true; hHis empathy is misplaced though, and Albee’s adaptation sets

this straight. “Albee confines Humbert’s obsessive passions to the sexual, and

reduces his love to mere pedophilic lust” (Cameron, 78). Without the stunning

language employed by Nabokov, this story told by Albee is less convincing as one of

love and more clearly one about the male privilege, wickedness, and sexual

manipulation that American culture allows. The illumination of these themes

further contribute to the reasons this play in particular is so important in the scope

of American history and therefore to the course.

Edward Albee’s adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s classic book Lolita was a

commercial flop when it opened on Broadway in 1981, lasting a mere 12

performances. However, in modern society I believe this play carries a different

weight that bears its rereading in a new context. Perhaps the reason this story was

so dreaded in American society was because, in this time period, amidst the Cold

war, America did not want to bridge the gap between the public and private.,

“Humbert the pedophile threatened the home, inner- most bastion of privacy and

last redoubt guarding liberal democratic freedoms” (Whiting, 834). As America

finally grapples with the gross sexual behavior of men that has gone unchecked for

so long, the audience of Albee’s Lolita is forced to come to grips with Humbert as the

pervert that he is, rather than as the sympathetic loner that has long been not only
stomached but celebrated in American literature (Gold, 50). Of the end of the novel

Ben Cameron writes,

“...we may not be pedophiles - presumably we deplore the practice - but

Humbert’s passion is curiously our own. These alliances of light and dark, of

universal and idiosyncratic are the crucial determinants of Humbert’s

character, yet these alliances are severed in Albee’s adaptation” (78).

Albee’s goal was to honor Nabokov with this adaptation but it is widely thought that

this piece failed to do that. This is because Albee’s adaptation takes away the

viewers ability to sympathize with Humbert. Acknowledging this difference in the

two works show us that, although the play may tell the same story, what we take

away from it is vastly different.

Lolita highlights a primary fault with men:; the manner in which they regard

the objects of their affection. “Humbert is every man who is driven by desire,

wanting his Lolita so badly, that it never occurs to him to consider her as a Human

being, or as anything but dream figment made flesh,. ” wrote Elizabeth Janeway in

her New York Times book review. This insightful reading of the novel through a

feminist lens becomes even more pronounced in Albee’s stage adaptation where we

see Lolita actualized on stage. In the novel, we only experience Lolita through the

eyes of Humbert. He paints his cruel obsession as a nymphet goddess unparalleled

by any other being that walks the earth. In Albee’s adaptation though, we see Lolita

in the flesh which shatters the inimitable image that a reader of the book has
inevitably conjured of her. “Humbert’s paeans to sensuality are contradicted by the

corporeal presence of a gangly, foul-mouthed girl with jutting elbows and knocking

knees. (Cameron, 79)” That is to say that Humbert’s vision needs to not be seen

cannot be seen to be believed. Once we see, on stage, an astute and well spoken man

ogling a young girl, the gravity and grossness of the scenario become all too real and

the perversion of Humbert supersedes all other interpretations of the story.

Humbert serves as a embodiment of the painful idea that no man is innocent.

In the 1950’s, when Nabokov first was trying to get this story published, the

climate of sexual assault in America was dramatically different than the movement

we’re seeing today. Although many felt Nabokov’s Lolita was, “repulsive,

highbrow...pornography” (Colapinto), there were surely other critics who saw the

book as a revelation of who commits sexual assault and how easily they are able to

do it. They attempted to keep Lolita out of the public eye because American society

was appallingly ill-prepared to address the rape of its women let alone its girls. For

example, in 1952 the Yale Law Journal said of rape,

When her behavior looks like resistance although her attitude is one of

consent, injustice may be done the man by the woman’s subsequent

accusation. Many women, for example, require as a part of preliminary “love

play” aggressive overtures by the man. Often their erotic pleasure may be

enhanced by, or even depend upon, an accompanying physical struggle. The

“love bite” is a common, if mild, sign of the aggressive component in the sex
 act. And the tangible signs of struggle may survive to support a subsequent

accusation by the woman (Smith).

This absurd assertion by an ivy league institution near the time of the book’s release Commented [MV3]: I hate that I’m about to say this, but
this should be capitalized
shows how easy it was for Humbert to get away with the seduction of Lolita and

clearly demonstrates a critical imbalance in sexual politics in the United Sstates at

this time in history. A grown woman, let alone a child, had hardly any grounds to

accuse a man of rape. This context further explains how Lolita was emblematic of

America at the time of its the novel’s conception. Commented [MV4]: Unclear whether you’re talking
about America or Lolita, so use a noun here, not a
pronoun
Albee has inserted Nabokov into his staged version of Lolita in the form of a

character that both opens and closes the play named ‘A Certain Gentleman’. This

character claims responsibility for the creation of Humbert and comments on him

and his behavior throughout the story, keeping the audience at a safe distance from

Humbert and making him a piece of satyr rather than a sympathetic character Commented [MV5]: Do you mean satire?

(Cameron, 78). In Nabokov’s story, Humbert is unfiltered and uncensored;, one

critic described him as representative of, “ the human mind at its freest and best,

lucid and unimpeachably self-aware, [he] discloses the mind's awesome capacity to

blind itself and other minds as it rationalizes away the pain it has caused” (Boyd,

227). Nabokov makes Humbert all too human in such a way that the reader cannot

help but see parts of themselves him or herself in him. Because Albee has made Commented [MV6]: Pronoun agreement. You say
“reader” singular, so you need a singular pronoun here.
Humbert fictitious rather than actual, the viewer is more easily able to examine this

story with a critical lens that allows us to see Lolita as the unfortunate victim of
Humbert she is, rather than as the willing accomplice that makes her story easier to

come to grips with.

American society has long given men the benefit of the doubt in cases where

they are accused of sexually predatory behavior. In recent news, the senatorial race

in Alabama included a candidate named Roy Moore who was accused by 8 separate

women of sexual assault and or sexually predatory behavior. Three3 of these cases Commented [MV7]: Shouldn’t use a number when it’s
starting a sentence
involved alleged victims who were under the age of consent and were therefore

pedophilic in nature (Bump) . Although no person in their right mind would

condone this behavior, it was all too easy for much of the electorate to overlook the

claims for the simple reason that Roy Moore refuted the events. Though he lost the

elections, his opponent’s margin of victory was a mere 1.5%. To be blunt, either

people didn't believe these women’s claims or they didn’t care; I’m not sure which is

worse. Either way, these disturbing results demonstrate the lack of respect that

American cCulture has for its women, which—a lack of respect that has been

cultivated in our society for as long as it has existed. Lolita, both the novel and its

play adaption, gives us other portals through which to look at the same problem but

in different times in our country's history.

Though it is widely considered to be a failed adaptation, Edward Albee’s

Lolita is a worthy piece of literature that stands on its own. With its additional

degree of separation from the protagonist through it’s embodiment of the author,

we see the same story and we also see societies society’s commentary on it. For

example, when Lolita and Humbert finally copulate, instead of reprimanding him, A

Certain Gentleman asks, “How was she? huh? huh?”. This is mockingHere, A Certain
Gentleman mocks the flippant attitude that American culture has for its victims of

sexual assault. Lolita is not only a play about sex or pedophilia, but so much more. It

gives us a context to see one of the most glaring problems in our society today.

During a time when this rampant issue is finally beginning to get the attention that it

deserves, there is no subject matter that is as deserving as being discussedto be

discussed in a class like Global Drama in Context.

Works Cited

Albee, Edward. The collected plays of Edward Albee. Overlook Duckworth,

2007.
 Boyd, Brian. Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years. PRINCETON, NEW
JERSEY, Princeton University Press, 1991. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1btc5pp.

Bump, Philip. “Analysis | Timeline: The accusations against Roy Moore.” The
Washington Post, WP Company, 16 Nov. 2017,
www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/11/16/timeline-the-
accusations-against-roy-moore/?utm_term=.c698a34f9292.

Cameron, Ben; THEATER IN NEW YORK: Who's Afraid of Vladimir Nabokov?

Edward Albee's Lolita. Theater 1 November 1981; 12 (3): 77–80.

Colapinto, John. “Nabokov's America.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 6
July 2017, www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/nabokovs-america.

Gold, Joseph. “The Morality of ‘Lolita.’” Bulletin. British Association for

American Studies, no.1, 1960, pp. 50–54. JSTOR, JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/27553489.

Janeway, Elizabeth. “The Tragedy of Man Driven by Desire.” The New York
Times, The New York Times, 17 Aug. 1958,
www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/lifetimes/nab-r-lolita.html.

JiffySpook. “Vladimir Nabokov Discusses ‘Lolita’ Part 2 of 2.” YouTube,

YouTube, 13 Mar. 2008, www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-wcB4RPasE.

Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich, and Craig Raine. Lolita. Penguin Books,

2015.

Smith, Sharon. “Capitalism and sexual assault.” Capitalism and sexual assault ,
International Socialist Review, isreview.org/issue/96/capitalism-and-sexual-
assault.

Whiting, Frederick. “‘The Strange Particularity of the Lover's Preference’:

Pedophilia, Pornography, and the Anatomy of Monstrosity in Lolita.” American
Literature, vol. 70, no. 4, 1998, pp. 833–862. JSTOR, JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/2902393.