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

-
132 --
poster" (LD, 72) - the kind of poster that Lolita would
fall victim to. Both have a passion for the cinema
in common. "Margot", says Moynahan, "turns out to be
entirely a creature of the camera-obscura world. "49
She has been an artist's model and then the model
and mistress of Axel Rex, and, ambitious to become
a film actress and convinced of her talent, she considers
her job as an usherette in a cinema as no more
than the start of that career. One of the advantages
of living with Albinus is that he "belonged to the
world which offered easy access to the stage and the
films" (LD, 45). She sees. her own life in terms of the
film world; the life she leads with Albinus makes her
think of a "first-class film", and sitting between-..
Axel and Albinus "she felt as though she were the
chief actress in a mysterious and passionate filmdrama"(LD,
95) and behaves accordingly. "Lolita's world
is in many ways a movie", says Alfred Appel.
50
She
keeps the pictures of "crooners" and movie stars above
her bed, she reads movie magazines, a visit to Hollywood
is the highlight of their long journey; as Charlotte
Haze remarks: "She sees herself as a starlet"
(L:, 65); and, like Margot, she acts out in life from time
to time what she has read about in her magazines or
seen in films.. "That she will eventually prefer Clare
Quilty to Humbert Humbert is the result ok her 'veri-
table passion' for Hollywood. " But to this remark
Appel adds in all fairness: ".. no one would suggest
that, from her point of view, a distinctive
choice is offered her. "51
moral