Romanticizing Lolita as a Young Girl: A Comparison Between the Movie and Book

Why do most girls have an obsession with Lolita? Or am I the only one? Here's my expirience with this tragic story, and a brief analysis on the movie and book.

Last year, I decided to take reading and writing more seriously. I’ve always liked to read, but I used to feel that my books of choice were not the best options, so I set myself a goal to start reading what we call “classic books”, with the hope they might inspire me to write any better. 

After reading gothic literature for so long, I was ready for a change of topic,and following some recommendations, the controversial Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov ended up in my reading list. I started this book with a lot of shame, my curiosity made me feel guilty, but I wanted to know what the novel was really about.

As it may be the case for many, the book was not the first contact I had with this story, in fact, the very first time I knew about Lolita was in my teenage years, when I was just a girl myself. It was through the 90’s movie and, of course, through Lana del Rey’s Born to Die album, where she uses quotes from the book in plenty of her songs. 

The movie’s atmosphere: summer vibes,red lipstick, cute outfits, heart shaped sunglasses… These elements captured me. Plus this “Lolita essence”, or what might be called today “Lolita aesthetic”, was present in an album that I adored as a teen and that somehow shaped me into who I am today; I fell in love with this story and I became obsessed.

At some point in my youth, I wanted to be like Lolita herself. She was careless, running bare feet everywhere. She was sassy, and got away with it because she was a pretty girl. She didn’t have any responsibilities, and most importantly, she was able to capture the attention of an older man. In my eyes she was magical, powerful even, capable and smart enough to get what she wanted.

In my delusion, I even considered Humbert to be lovely and caring. In the movie, he is portrayed as a shy professor,smart and romantic, clumsy and nervous, unable to resist a precocious and “manipulative”  Lolita, this seductive creature in her revealing coquette outfits. Humbert was not a stereotyped evil predator, as we see in other tales, and my teenage undeveloped brain thought of this “union” as a tragic love story of a good man falling in love with a seductress, who just happened to be an underage girl.

Now, having read the novel as an adult woman, I cannot explain the heartbreak I felt, and the pain I ignored for so long. During the movie, we see Humbert’s actions through his eyes and everything is so beautiful and distracting,that it’s easy to ignore Dolores’ situation, and it’s also easy to even blame her for seducing him. The director makes you think that he “falls in love” with Dolores because she’s all over him, it is "not his fault". But the book is a narration from Humbert himself, a confession to his crimes. He’s telling us the story, and we are able to see what he sees, but at the same time we can judge him more clearly with no distractions, and with no charismatic Lolita in the scenes; also, in the book Dolores is younger, just 12 years old. There is no way she was this powerful seductive creature, she was just a girl being herself, and we were seeing her through the eyes of a perverted man.

I hated Humbert since the beginning of the book. In the movie, we don’t know a lot about his past; but the book explains his long history of molesting young girls. He was a full time predator and a horrible annoying man, a snob that thought better of himself than everyone else. 

When I was getting closer to the end of the book, I decided to stay up late to finish it. I was desperately hoping something good would happen to Dolores at the end. I was waiting to see something different from the movie. But it was just the same. She got herself free from Humbert and, somehow, she went on with her life. That was enough, being free was enough.

Now, being older, I think about the impact this story had on my young self. Oh I wanted to be like Lolita so bad! I wanted to be a magical creature too,but when I had my first contact with this story I was too immature and naive to realize the horrible things this fictitious creature was going through. I am certain that we would not be able to digest this story if it were narrated from Dolores perspective, that would be too painful.

I wanted to blame the movie director for portraying Dolores as guilty for what happened to her; but I also recognize that this is the essence of the book, and its main attribute: The fact that we are able to see this child through a predator’s eyes and understand what he’s seeing. He’s trying to find a justification for what he's done when there’s obviously none.

My biggest hope is that younger girls don’t encounter this movie or book while being young, and if they do, I hope that they are able to see this work for what it is: a tragedy; and that we stop romanticizing these cruel and dangerous situations. My message for young girls is: This is not romance, and catching an older man’s attention is not the biggest price you could get. Yes you are magical and powerful, yes be careless and run barefeet in the summer if you want to,wear your coquette outfits, but do it only for yourself and beware of older people showing interest in you. They are not shy and clumsy Humberts, they might be predators.