I think a hell of a lot of people just don't GET Lolita. People are so used to reading books with good, nice, sympathetic protagonists that they automatically start to identify with the narrator/central character of a book and subconsciously put themselves on his/her side. The whole point of Lolita, to me anyway, is that Nabokov wanted to show everyone how awful and disgusting Humbert is by making readers like him. Thus making readers also find themselves slightly awful and disgusting; because in some ways he's very likable. Yeah he's a horrible, supremely selfish abusive bastard and if I knew him in real life I'd be calling the police and/or pushing him under a train; but as a fictional character he's fantastic. Funny, intelligent, interesting, full of snark... really fun to read at some points.
The problem that you're writing about (I've seen it too) is that a lot of stupid people take Humbert at face value and connect what he's saying to their own subconscious perceptions of girls and female sexuality, and come up with the whole theory of OMG BUT LOLITA WAS TOTALLY IN CONTROL OF THE WHOLE THING AND IT WAS HER IDEA IN THE FIRST PLACE AND SHE MUSTVE WANTED IT COS SHE WORE SHORTS. THE SLUT. It's like they can't handle being told to sympathise with an abuser/abuse apologist... so they pretend he isn't abusive, so they can sympathise with him that way, instead of having to go through the weird feeling of liking a (fictional - or semi-autobiographical - theories abound) rapist and all the questions about society and the inside of your own head which that throws up. (Which is a shame, because IMO that's the best thing about the book, and why I like/hate it so much...)
Woo! Nothing like rambly emojournal literary criticism to wake me up on a sunday morning... ;D
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The problem that you're writing about (I've seen it too) is that a lot of stupid people take Humbert at face value and connect what he's saying to their own subconscious perceptions of girls and female sexuality, and come up with the whole theory of OMG BUT LOLITA WAS TOTALLY IN CONTROL OF THE WHOLE THING AND IT WAS HER IDEA IN THE FIRST PLACE AND SHE MUSTVE WANTED IT COS SHE WORE SHORTS. THE SLUT. It's like they can't handle being told to sympathise with an abuser/abuse apologist... so they pretend he isn't abusive, so they can sympathise with him that way, instead of having to go through the weird feeling of liking a (fictional - or semi-autobiographical - theories abound) rapist and all the questions about society and the inside of your own head which that throws up. (Which is a shame, because IMO that's the best thing about the book, and why I like/hate it so much...)
Woo! Nothing like rambly emojournal literary criticism to wake me up on a sunday morning... ;D