Lolita
Lolita
What is the role of gender when addressing the jury in Lolita?
What is the role of gender when addressing the jury in Lolita?
Since Nabokov believes fiction should not be moral, but only aesthetic, he mocks our tendency to make moral judgments by having Humbert address his readers as jury members and judges. Humbert attempts to remove moral responsibility for his actions by subscribing to a philosophy of fate; if he is not in charge of events, then he cannot be held liable for them. There is always a sense that Humbert idealizes, and stretches, the European acceptance of older men involved sexually with younger women. Humbert justifies his actions with eloquent english to these ends.