Lolita: Nabokov's Lady of Sorrows

I keep forgetting to post my paper, even though Dr. Sexson has told us to about a hundred times! So here it is finally, and now I can stop worrying about it!


“She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita” (Nabokov 9). Lo, Lola, Dolly, Dolores and finally Lolita, from her official given name to the loving tenderness of Lolita, these are the names that Humbert gives his adored nymphet in Nabokov’s Lolita. In truth though Lolita’s name means one thing and this is personified throughout the tale. Dolores translates as “sorrows”, and this sorrow does not only apply to Lolita herself, but also consumes those around her, especially those people who love her, namely Humbert.

Dolores, or Mater Dolorosa in Latin, often translates into Our Lady of Sorrows, but she has several names that have emerged through the years. The Mater Dolorosa also refers to the Virgin Mary and all the “sorrows” she has suffered throughout her life. All translations of Dolores make it the perfect choice of name by Nabokov for his doomed nymphet. While the name throughout religious history has referred to the sorrows that the Mater Dolorosa suffers herself. Nabokov takes it one step farther to engulf those that love Lolita in their own sorrows as well.

The reader is taken on a journey through Nabokov’s Lolita that follows Lolita and Humbert as they travel and share their sorrows. Right away the reader begins to realize that Lolita will experience some kind of sorrow. Her childhood is stolen from her by a man she barely knows, and she is forever changed. Even Humbert realizes the change that has taken place after he has “possessed” her for the first time, “More and more uncomfortable did Humbert feel. It was something quite special, that feeling: an oppressive hideous constraint as if I were sitting with the small ghost of somebody I had just killed” (Nabokov 140).

Lolita herself exemplifies the Virgin Mary as Our Lady of Sorrows. She is innocent and unharmed in the beginning, but through her life with Humbert the reader gets to see her evolution from the Virgin to the Lady of Sorrows. The reader experiences and reacts to this change as Humbert does, so that we share in her pain and his epiphanies about all he has done. Humbert even writes that Lolita, “…sobs in the night-every night, every night-the moment I feigned sleep” (Nabokov 176). He realizes what he has done, but cannot control his obsession or change what has happened.

This is where Humbert’s sorrow begin. After he “possesses” her, he realizes that she no longer is the nymphet he first loved. She has changed, and his sorrow emerges out of his longing for what she was. Through his search for her, his lust and obsession becomes insatiable love for her no matter her appearance, “I…knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else” (Nabokov 277). Lolita refuses to return with him and all his hopes are consumed in her dreadful word of “no.” From that meeting on Humbert is no longer alive and aimlessly travels to meet his doom.

Nabokov creates a nymphet named Dolores that is in herself the Lady of Sorrows. Lolita does not suffer alone, but ensnares all those around her, especially Humbert.