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

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Looking at it for a moment with moral terms in
mind, one might even say that when she leaves Humbert
and runs away with Quilty she does the most moral
thing she can do in her situation. Unlike Margot,
who stays with unloved Albinus for the sake of luxury,
Lolita is not willing to stay with Humbert, whom she
does not love, merely for the sake of material security
and comfort. She follows Quilty because she is in
love with him. She does not see through him at that
stage and has no idea, what "weird, filthy, fancy
things" (269) she will be expected to take part in on
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his ranch with the telling name. It seems, in fact,
that the critics are somewhat inconsistent with regard
to Lolita. They see her as a product of her edu-
cation, a. child who has learnt to "think and feel
only in terms of outwardly inspired stereotypes"
53;
they admit that her education does not "enable [Lolita]
to distinguish between the truly perverted and nature's
faithful hounds"54; and they state that the
whole society in which she grows up is corrupt: "It
is no accident that Quilty is rich and successful,
that he has 'friends' on the police force,
... a reputation
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as an outstanding playwright.,, Granted all
this, it seems unfair to expect insights of her that
would be superior to those of which anybody around
her is capable. Seeing in Humbert a dirty
told man and
in Quilty a genius she does only what society has
taught her. It seems equally unfair to accuse her of
a "horrifying" lack of imagination because she is un-
able to imagine Humbert's state of mind.
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This
is