Lolita - 'Dolores Haze - Seductress or Victim?'
Published 14/10/16
Vladimir Nabokov's revolutionary novel, Lolita, follows the abduction and sexual abuse of 12 year old Dolores Haze, better known as Lolita, by her pedophilic stepfather - and crucially, narrator - Humbert Humbert. Yet, Dolores Haze has been filtered and reduced down to the derogatory and misleading definition of "Lolita" in the English dictionary as a "a precociously, seductive girl". This widely accepted unsympathetic reading of one of the most controversial protagonists in existence, dictated by the manipulative verbal tricks of Humbert's narration, has eclipsed what is for me, the essence of Dolores Haze; a tragic and exploited child, a captive, a rape victim.
From our Foreign Language Film Club, by Dasha Scanlan Oumow