''Vladimir Nabokov's Comic Quest for Reality' - Nottingham eTheses

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attraction he had for her as "the glamorous lodger"
(49) and which prompted her on various occasions
"in imitation of some simulacrum of fake romance"
(112) to try out on him what she has seen in movies
and movie magazines, and which also prompted her at
the Enchanted Hunters Hotel to boast her "experience".
As Humbert correctly states, her curiosity has first
turned into distaste, and after a while she is ready
to turn away from him "with something akin to plain
repulsion" (163). They remain together because they
are mutually dependent on each other, Humbert, because
of his passion, Lolita, because she has nobody else
to support her.
In this relationship the vulgar and philistine
little American girl incongruously and comically
figures as "Keats' 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' in
bobby socks"42, and L. Trilling's interpretation
equally incongruously promotes her to the role of
the passionately loved and cruel mistress of the romances
of courtly love.
43
It gives another comic
twist to things when, with Lolita in these roles in
mind, one sees Humbert securing her unwilling submission
to his demands through means which definitively
degrade their relationship: through blandishments
and threats (145), through terrorizing her (149)
and
eventually even through paying her. Sometimes
he takes a perverse pleasure in inventing ways of
making this cruel little mistress do what he has come
to regard as her duty: "How sweet it was to bring
that coffee to her, and then deny it until she had