Freudian Themes Elements in Vladimir Nabokov\'s Lolita

Freud in Lolita

The narrator of Vladimir Nabakov's novel Lolita, Professor Humbert, begins his story by recounting his childhood and the early stages of his sexual life, and particularly his experiences with his first love (or at least, his first obsession), a young girl named Annabel Leigh. Humbert recalls their sexual (mis)adventures together in some detail, and his description of this childhood romance closely echoes Sigmund Freud's formulation of the "infantile sexuality" in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. However, Humbert and Annabel are thwarted each time they attempt a coupling, and Annabel dies soon afterwards. This creates a rift in the young Humbert such that he is unable to appreciate girls or women until he meets Lolita, further echoing another of Freud's theories, this time of the oppositional instincts elucidated in The Ego and the Id. By analyzing Humbert's experiences with Annabel and the effects of her subsequent death in light of Freud's theories, it will be possible to see how Humbert's thwarted sexual desires coupled with Annabel's death instigates the character development that will ultimately lead to his obsession with Lolita.

Before addressing the text of Lolita, it will be useful to explicate the relevant portions of Freud's theories as a means of better understanding the details of the novel. The first concept to address is Freud's notion of the infantile sexuality that arises during "the infantile period of latency or deferment," which is the period of a child's development in which his or her sexual urges are sublimated upon being introduced into society at large (most often in the form of attending school for the first time) (Freud 45). This sexuality is described as infantile (even though it may extend up until puberty) because it represents the "fragmentary manifestation of sexuality which has avoided sublimation" but which can only ever emerge in mediated forms, such as thumb-sucking and what Freud calls "auto-erotism," which may include but does not necessarily mean masturbation. In fact, Freud identifies thumb-sucking as a form of auto-erotism because it is a pleasure-giving activity that "is not directed towards other people, but obtains satisfaction from the subject's own body" (Freud 47).

Although Freud initially focuses on thumb-sucking, he broadens the manifestations of infantile sexuality to include "an appropriate stimulation of any erotogenic zone," which can in fact be anywhere on the body, depending on the developing sexuality of any given person (Freud 50). It is here that Freud's theory initially dovetails with Humbert's narration, because the early interactions between Humbert and Annabel describe the eroticizing of a number of different body parts not strictly associated with sexuality. Humbert very nearly describes Freud's theory explicitly when he remarks that "there, on the soft sand, a few feet away from our elders, we would sprawl all morning, in a petrified paroxysm of desire" (Nabakov 12). He then goes on to list a number of erotogenic zones, as the two "take advantage of every blessed quirk in space and time to touch each other: her hand, half-hidden in the sand, would creep toward me […] then, her opalescent knee would start on a long cautious journey" (Nabakov 12). These interactions continue until the two attempt to have sex, and although it is not chronologically the next major event in Humbert's life, he describes their last attempt next, and it serves to highlight the still-infantile nature of their interactions.

Humbert describes being on his knees on the beach, "on the point of possessing my darling, when two bearded bathers, the old man of the sea and his brother, came out of the sea with exclamations of ribald encouragement," interrupting their coupling before the act and ensuring that it would ultimately never happen, as "four months later she died of typhus in Corfu" (Nabakov 13). Annabel's death will become important in a moment, but for now it suffices to note that the two youths' coupling is interrupted by the sexuality of adulthood; the old men shout out their ribald encouragement, thus highlighting the fact that Humbert and Annabel remain distinctly infantile in comparison to the unsublimated sexuality of adulthood.

To understand the importance of Annabel's death to Humbert's development, one must look to another of Freud's texts, specifically his discussion of two oppositional instincts in The Ego and the Id: "the sexual instinct, or Eros [and the] death instinct, the task of which is to lead organic life back into the inanimate state" (Freud 37-38). It is important to note that "the two classes of instincts are fused, blended, and alloyed with each other," because this reveals precisely why "the shock of Annabel's death consolidated the frustration of that nightmare summer, made of it a permanent obstacle to any further romance throughout the cold years of [Humbert's] youth" (Nabakov 14). This summer should have seen the development of Humbert and Annabel's sexuality from that of the infantile to the (relatively) fully-formed libidinal inclinations of puberty, but instead their couplings are cut short and Annabel's death (the enactment of the "death instinct") precipitates a simultaneous death of Humbert's sexual instinct. In fact, one may even go so far as to read the inability of Humbert and Annabel to consummate their relationship as the narrative cause of Annabel's death, because the failure to enact the sexual instinct, whose role is "complicating life and at the same time […] preserving it," precipitates the enactment of its opposite, the death instinct (Freud 38). Considering their relationship in this way reveals the ultimate meaning behind Humbert's claim that Annabel "haunted [him] ever since -- until at last, twenty four years later, [he] broke her spell by incarnating her in another" (Nabakov 15). The haunting specter of Annabel carries with it the continued effects Freud's death instinct, precluding Humbert from romance until that specter can be exercised through the ultimate enactment of the sexual instinct, via a surrogate lover in the form of Lolita.