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

-
122 -
for all practica1 purposes: He sustains
her, he buys her clothes and presents, he takes her
on long journeys, he gives her tennis lessons, he
tries to give her an education. He does "everything
in my power to give my Lolita a really good time"
(160). But where fatherly affection should come in,
there is Humbert's insatiable sexual desire. Lolita,
for her part, shows little filial love for Humbert
and never calls him "Dad" without a sneer of ironic
contempt. After he has lost his initial glamorous
attraction for the girl, she accepts what he offers
her in material respects without any particular show
of gratitude, and, the sexual complication apart,
makes life difficult for him. "Lolita, when she chose,
could be a most exasperating brat", Humbert admits.
"I was not really quite prepared for her fits of disorganized
boredom, intense and vehement griping, her
sprawling, droopy, dopey-eyed style, and what is
called goofing... "; "Charlotte
began to
,I
understand
you! " he sighs, remembering Charlotte's complaints
about her impossible daughter (145ff). There
is an oblique comment on this father-daughter relationship
in the fact that Lolita seduces Humbert in
the town of Briceland. The name of this town, as,
again, Appel points out, evokes the name of Fanny
Brice who starred in a radio-programme of the forties.
The two characters in this programme, the unpleasant
Baby Snooks and her "helpless and ineffectual Daddums",
and their relationship: "the program explored all but
one of the various ways the tyrannical Baby Snooks