In this blog post, we examine whether Humbert’s emotion in the film Lolita was indeed love, or a distorted desire born of taboo and obsession, pondering the essence of relationships and the authenticity of emotion.
Vladimir Nabokov’s original novel, Lolita
Humbert, a 47-year-old French literature professor still carrying the pain of his first love, stops in New England, USA, for a lecture. Seeking lodging, he visits the home of a widow named Charlotte and fatefully meets a young girl. She is Charlotte’s daughter, Lolita. Inside the house, Charlotte flies into a rage, the situation rapidly escalates, and ultimately Charlotte meets her death. Director Adrian Lyne’s Lolita is a 1997 film adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s original novel Lolita. Though based on the novel, the film’s character and detailed depictions are handled through the director’s lens, making it distinctly different.
Was Professor Humbert’s love truly love?
It is strikingly evident that Lolita in the film is far more caricatured than in the original novel. Character-wise, the Humbert in the novel is clearly a pedophile, referring to Lolita as a “nymph.” However, the film’s Humbert portrays a deeply yearning love for Lolita, depicting him as pitiable and heartrending, unable to forget his first love. This seems amplified by the casting of the brilliant actor Jeremy Irons in the role of Humbert. While engaging in forbidden love, Humbert—or perhaps director Adrian Lyne—justifies his actions, suggesting that the death of his first love made him this way. Such rationalization was likely accepted by audiences. Yet this self-justification ruined Lolita’s life. Humbert also displays an obsession with Perish. However intense his feelings may have been, his love was undeniably not love. What he desired and sought from her was not her happiness, but only his own happiness through possessing her within his grasp. Ultimately, he kills the childhood of this beautiful little girl. The most vibrant, innocent, and joyful period of her life—a time when she should have been purer, brighter, and happier than anyone—was instead defined by a love-hate relationship with her mother, a physical relationship with her stepfather, an unstable home, and a childhood spent craving love through the fulfillment of sexual desire. This childhood will undoubtedly hold her back for the rest of her life. He would say he loved her, but he only desired her for his own pleasure; she was absent from that desire. He would say he loved her, but he only desired her for his own pleasure; she was absent from that desire. He merely feared she might leave him, so he imprisoned her more tightly within himself. A relationship where neither I nor you exist, where desire is merely the way one loves, cannot be love.
The most crucial word: ‘taboo’
If I had to describe the movie ‘Lolita’ in one word, it would be ‘taboo’. Because the word ‘taboo’ encompasses both ‘love’ and ‘desire’. This very ‘taboo’ becomes the reason for Humbert’s death. Humbert kills Quilty, and somehow, he appears heroic, as if he killed for her sake, evoking sympathy. But Quilty’s last words are right. What exactly is the difference between himself and Humbert? Thus, Humberto, knowing he shouldn’t love her, yet doing everything he wanted despite that knowledge, succumbs to guilt and meets his death.
The Deadly Allure of a Young Girl
Looking at Lolita’s relationship with her mother, it’s clear Lolita did love Humberto, but as a father figure. At the end, she tells Humberto: I never loved you. Yet Lolita’s seduction of Humbert was merely an Electra complex. She seduced Humbert, whom her mother loved, to win the rivalry with her mother. Reading Hollywood magazines, she was sexually precocious compared to other children her age, absorbing the stimulating, fantastical concepts of Hollywood films instead of necessary ones. Then, after her mother’s death, she began to suffer terribly and wanted to escape from Humbert. But she couldn’t escape. She had nowhere to go, and to Lolita, Humbert was family. Ultimately, she went to Quail, but as Quail said, finding a happier family on her own was the only way for her to find happiness.
