Lolita in Lolita, or the Garden, the Gate and the Critics

A surprising number of Lolita's critics have described Lolita in the most derogatory tones, citing what they see as her vulgarity, banality, plebian lack of cultivation and predatory sensuality. Still other critics have seen in her a "symbol" of such things as America and artistic creation. In many of these cases these tendencies are accompanied by a relative disinterest for the fate that befalls her in the book—a tendency Nabokov's wife Véra tried to correct as early as 1959 by pointing out: "She cries every night and the critics are deaf to her sobs." The essay seeks to follow what elements in the novel give rise to this reaction and to elucidate what the phenomenon reflects about the conflicting demands placed on the novel's readers.