The Analysis of Humbert Humbert’s Pedophilia in Lolita by the Psychoanalysis Criticism
THESIS Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Pendidikan
Dian Nurani Pramesti 112009069
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The Analysis of Humbert Humbert’s Pedophilia in Lolita by the Psychoanalysis Criticism
THESIS Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Pendidikan
Dian Nurani Pramesti 112009069
Approved by:
Dian iii
COPYRIGHT STATEMENT
This thesis contains no such material as has been submitted for examination in any course or accepted for the fulfillment of any degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and my belief, this contains no material previously published or written by any other person except where due reference is made in the text.
Copyright@ 2013. Dian Nurani Pramesti and Danielle Donelson-Sims, M.A
All rights reserved. No part of this thesis may be reproduced by any means without the permission of at least one of the copyright owners or the English Department, Faculty of Language and Literature. Satya Wacana Christian University, Salatiga.
Dian Nurani Pramesti
Dian iv
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Danielle Donelson-Sims, M.A Lany Kristono, M.Hum
The Analysis of Humbert Humbert‘s Pedophilia in Lolita Using Psychoanalysis Criticism
Dian Nurani Pramesti
Abstract Pedophilia is one kind of mental disorder that happens in the society that also happened in a novel entitled Lolita. So, the purpose of the study is to uncover the underlying reasons for pedophilia using Psychoanalysis Criticism. As the theory concerns how things happen based on childhood events, the writer found that what happened toward Humbert in ―Lolita‖ as a pedophile was because the death of his lover when he was a teenager that turned out to be traumatic for him. The writer tried to relate and connect Humbert‘s past traumatic memory on his childhood with what effect it gives in his adulthood. Keywords: Psychoanalysis Criticism, childhood memory, pedophilia.
Introduction
Pedophilia. This word is closely related with sexual deviation. But what is it actually? Ir. Suyatno, M.Kes, a lecturer in Faculty of Public Health, Diponegoro University, stated in his blog that pedophiles are adults who like to do sex or abusive physical contacts with kids. Pedophilia actually means love for children, but then the word is used to describe the psychosexual development disorder where adults have an abnormal erotic desire to children (Sadarjoen 71). Although we are not children any longer, but what if we see some children being abused by some people who are pedophiles? We will of course curse that person because we think that the person has a lack of morals. We sometimes heard some cases where an old man was sexually abusing a little child. The motives are usually by giving the little child some money or candy, then later on taking the little child to a desolated place then rape that kid. That case also happened in Buleleng, according to Beritabali.com, Dian 2
JanJacobus Vogel was sentenced guilty for doing sexual abuse to four 9-12 year-old students.
Of course this kind of thing is so creepy.
The question is that why are people pedophiles? I was really curious why that kind of people could be pedophilias, until I found ―Lolita‖, a novel by Vladimir Nabokov which tells us about the life of Humbert, a pedophile, as he said, ―I was consumed by a hell furnace of localized lust for every passing nymphet whom as a law-abiding poltroon I never dared approach (Nabokov 31)‖. Evidently, Humbert‘s pedophilia can be analyzed from the literary perspective, that is by using the Psychoanalysis theory because by using it we will be able to know what was exactly in Humbert‘s mind related to his pedophilia. According to Barry, psychoanalysis, a theory developed by Sigmund Freud, is a form of therapy which aims to cure mental disorders ‗by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind‘ (96). But in literary theory, it is used to identify the mental disorders by checking on the unconscious mind. I really like this theory because through this theory we can analyze something through people‘s minds. Even so, this psychoanalysis theory that I use is only head for the literary critics.
My research question in this paper is ―How can traumatic effects shape
Humbert‘s personality into becoming a pedophile, seen from Psychoanalysis Criticism?‖ The reason I take the traumatic effects as the ones which can affect Humbert into being a pedophile is because by using the Psychoanalysis Criticism, what is being analyzed are things related to his past, including his childhood.
The biggest question is why do I have a research on this. Here, what I want to do is give emphasis to how being a pedophile is not merely the fault of the person who has it.
Because later on, through the analysis, we will find that there are many things that are able to affect a person and contribute to them becoming a pedophile. Because society tend to judge
Dian 3 pedophilia as something immoral, but here, my curiosity of the reasons why someone can be a pedophile is not because I do agree with pedophiles, and even I myself still do think that pedophilia is immoral. However, by doing this research, I want it to be a good sample and a good resource for others who want to have a research in Psychoanalysis Criticism, pedophilia, or even childhood trauma, because from my own experience in doing this, I found it difficult to find resources about literature resources on psychoanalysis, let alone pedophilia. Whereas, there are many people who are interested in psychoanalysis criticism, especially on childhood traumatic events part. The other thing that makes me want to have a research on this is that there are not many articles which discuss the problem of Humbert as a pedophile and analyze it using Freud‘s theory. One example on the previous study that discusses Humbert‘s pedophilia comes from Warren Holt. On Other/Wise, an online journal of International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education he discusses how Humbert‘s pedophilia happened regarding to the ego-ideal of psychoanalysis criticism. So, this might be a good chance for me to analyze
Humbert‘s pedophilia by the unconscious motion of psychoanalys theory.
Summary
The text that I am going to analyze is Lolita, a novel written by Vladimir
Nabokov, which is very controversial. This novel had ever been banned from publishing but as well as being a best seller in the United States. As cited from Gore, it was first published in
1955 in French, but it was rejected by many US publishers because many thought that it was pornographic – the relationship between a twelve-year-old girl with a middle-aged man. Only in 1958 was the book published in both United States and United Kingdom.
The story is about a middle-aged man named Humbert Humbert who was a pedophile. His mother died when he was three years old and in the summer of 1923, when he was thirteen, his father was away to Italy and left him alone with his unawareness of
Dian 4 sexuality. At the same time, he started to know a girl named Annabel. Both of them liked each other, they even tried to do things that they were not supposed to do yet. But one day,
Annabel was sick and then she died. Humbert was really shocked knowing that Annabel had passed away.
Due to that past event, Humbert never loved any woman about the same age as him. He was only attracted to girls around nine to fourteen years old and he lived under the shadow of Annabel because each time he saw a girl who had a similar physical appearance with Annabel, it would make him had a memory of her. And he lived under the shadow of
Annabel for twenty four years until he found another ―Annabel‖ in Lolita, like what he said in the novel, ―I am convinced, however, that in a certain magic and fateful way Lolita began with Annabel‖ (Nabokov 24). Lolita was Dolores Haze, a twelve-year-old girl. Lolita was the daughter of Mrs. Haze, Humbert‘s landlady in Ramsdale, New England. He then married
Mrs. Haze; although he was actually infatuated with Lolita as he stated on the novel, ―And what is most singular is that she, this Lolita, my Lolita, has individualized the writer's ancient lust, so that above and over everything there is—Lolita‖ (Nabokov 78).
After Mrs. Haze‘s death from an accident, Humbert took Lolita away from
Ramsdale. They were going around United States while Humbert was enjoying his desire as a pedophile.
Psychoanalysis Theory
Psychoanalysis is a form of therapy which aims to cure mental disorders by investigating the interaction of conscious and unconscious elements in the mind (Barry).As described in Literary Theory: An Anthology edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan,
Sigmund Freud discovered that the human mind contains a dimension that is only partially accessible to consciousness and then only through indirect means such as dreams or neurotic
Dian 5 symptoms, while the unconscious is a repository of repressed desires, feelings, memories, and instinctual drives that have to do with sexuality and violence (389).
In psychoanalysis, we know the words unconscious, conscious, and conscience.
Unconscious is the part of the mind beyond consciousness which nevertheless has a strong influence upon our action (Barry 96). ―The ‗unconscious‘, as Freud called it, is a repository of repressed desires, feelings, memories, and instinctual drives, many of which, according to him, have to do with sexual and violence‖ (Rivkin dan Ryan). The basic assumption of
Freud‘s theory is that much of our behavior stems from processes that are unconscious which means thought, fears, and wishes a person is unaware of but which nevertheless influence behavior (Atkinson, Atkinson dan Hilgard). Then, there is also an idea repression which means forgetting or ignoring of unresolved conflicts, inadmitted desires, or traumatic past events, so that they are focused out of conscious awareness and into the realm of the unconscious (Barry). The relation between unconscious and repression is that by doing the repression, the memory is kept in the unconsciousness.
There might be so many things about psychoanalysis like what I‘ve described before, but here I would not focus only on the things above, because my focus is actually more on the traumatic childhood memory. Some notions by Freud are mostly talking about the memory.
Like what is stated by Barry that Freud‘s work depends upon the unconscious. While the unconscious is closely related to the memory. So, that is the reason I relate psychoanalysis criticism, especially on the unconscious, with my aim of this research to know the reason why
Humbert is being a pedophilia by looking at his childhood memory.
While in psychiatry, trauma has assumed a different meaning and refers to an experience that is emotionally painful, distressful, or shocking, which often results in lasting mental and physical effects (Wulandari). Here, we could see that traumatic events, especially when they happen in childhood, could affect the mental health of the person who has it.
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Discussion and Analysis
Parents left Humbert Humbert, the main character of Lolita, a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, was born in 1910 in Paris. His mother died when he was three years old, so then he was cared for his aunt, Sybil. Nevertheless, he lived in joyfulness until he was a teenager. Up to thirteen years old, he was just a usual boy, like other children who liked to play and had lots of joy, but then at that time, his father went to take a trip in Italy with Madame de R. Although it was not stated how long his father was gone, but indeed led Humbert in loneliness and confusion, because he was also lived in a boarding school, so that his communication with his father did not happen every day. Thus, it made him having no one to share things he wanted to tell because Humbert did not tell the reader whether he had friends or not in the boarding school.
From the summary of Humbert‘s childhood above, we could see that Humbert had lost his parents since childhood. His mother died when he was three, and his father left him in a boarding school when he was thirteen. Being left by the parents can be a traumatic event for children like what is stated below:
“Many people wrongly believe that babies do not notice or remember traumatic events. In fact, anything that affects older children and adults in a family can also affect a baby. Traumatic and life-threatening events may include incidents such as car accidents, bushfires, sudden illness, traumatic death in the family, crime, abuse or violence.” (Trauma and children - newborns to two years) Even newborns until two years old children can notice the traumatic events happen to them, let alone for Humbert who was three years old when his mother died. This event would certainly affect Humbert‘s life, whether his childhood or even his adulthood, because parents‘ affection is one thing that affects someone‘s behavior. Marks, Jun, and Song on their study from Cooney &Uhlenberg, 1992; Eggebeen& Hogan, 1990; Rossi & Rossi, 1990 stated thatmothers continue to provide a range of financial, emotional, and instrumental support to
Dian 7 daughters and sons across the adult years. The situation that happened to Humbert was that he had no emotional and instrumental support from his mother, which is actually needed by a son. Let alone, psychoanalysis criticism also explains that the relation of sons and mothers has a very strong meaning ever since they are still infants. In his general introduction to psychoanalysis, Freud stated that children will be soon having bliss in their sleeps after having fed by their mothers (Freud 270). So, the point here is by the death of his mother,
Humbert was lack of affection from mother, whereas mother‘s affection is needed by a son.
By his parents‘ leaving, his opportunity to know about sex education since childhood was lessened. Whereas having sexual education since childhood is such an important thing as quoted ―Children and teens can make responsible choices about sexual health only when they have a solid understanding of their bodies and sexuality‖ (Harris). By understanding what
Harris said, children should have a strong foundation first to know about sexuality and its education, so that later on they could be responsible for what they have done. It was also stated by Freud that children should be held out, convinced, and directed into controlling their sexual instinct (Freud 358). His father indeed gave him sex education as it is shown from the quotation taken from the novel below:
“Later, in his delightful debonair manner, my father gave me all the information he thought I needed about sex.” (Nabokov 19)
But later on at the time when Humbert really needed the figure of a father to consult with, his father was gone. Besides, Freud also stated that the tendency of having sexual distortion is based on their childhood (Freud), so if the foundation on sexual education is not yet strong, then it was possible for Humbert to have misunderstanding of his bodies and sexuality in which stuck with him until he was an adult.
Dian 8
From the death of his mother and the gone of his father, it is clearly stated that actually, Humbert still needed a place to share, a place to consult, and a place to lean on as it seen below:
“Later, in his delightful debonair manner, my father gave me all the information he thought I needed about sex; this was just before sending me, in the autumn of 1923, to a lycèe in Lyon (where we were to spend three winters); but alas, in the summer of that year, he was touring Italy with Mme de R. and her daughter, and I had nobody to complain to, nobody to consult. (Nabokov 19)”
By the absence of his parents, he got less affection from his parents and also he could not share his confusion and experience about sex. Thus, in the result, he found Annabel, the daughter of Humbert‘s aunt‘s friend. She was some months younger than Humbert.
When Humbert met Annabel, he was thirteen years old, in which he was in the state of puberty, and in this state, people learn to desire members of the opposite sex (Felluga).
This also happened with Humbert, in which he had a strong desire to Annabel, and so did
Annabel toward Humbert.
“All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other”(Nabokov 21) Seeing what he did back then when he was still a teenager, we could assume that he was heterosexual. What I mean is that, he was in love and having a desire toward a girl in his age.
There was nothing wrong with his sexual desire from this point. But the thing is that, how could Humbert be a pedophilia then? Rivkin and Ryan stated that, ―Freud argued that our mental lives derive largely from biological drives, that the highest achievements and ideals of civilization are inseparable from instinctual urges toward pleasure, constancy, and the release of excitation and energy‖. From the theory, we could connect Humbert‘s pedophilia with his childhood experience. His mental disorder happened because it was derived from his trauma when Annabel died. Furthermore, at the time when Annabel died, he was in the state of
Dian 9 having pleasure and desire toward opposite sex. Thus, that state is one point that drives his mental behavior as a pedophile.
When he was with Annabel, he had joyful moments that were full of desire. He was in love for the first time with Annabel and he got the love and care he missed from his parents from Annabel. But the worst thing is that, Annabel died when he had just found his joyfulness. This is told as the quotation below:
“I was on my knees, and 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, and four months later she died of typhus in Corfu.” (Nabokov 23) Anyhow, someone‘s death will give pain to the persons they left. That also happened to Humbert. He had lost his mother when he was still a baby and being left by his father for not so long ago. Suddenly, when he had found someone to replace his parents‘ love, it was also gone away. It‘s clear that Humbert had experienced another traumatic event related to grief, in which it shaped his mind unconsciously that he only desired teenage girls or what he said as the nymphets. His only desire toward nymphets matches with what Freud would say about grief and its effect on someone‘s behavior. ―Grief is a prototype and perfect example of an affective fixation upon something that is past, and, like the neuroses, it also involves a state of complete alienation from the present and the future (Freud 289).‖ Here, Humbert was stuck with his sexual orientation because of the grief and trauma he had regarding to what happened with Annabel. Like what is stated before, Humbert met Annabel when he was thirteen, in which he was in the phase of puberty, so he had desire towards the opposite sex, as stated by Felluga, ―13 years of age onward (or from puberty on). Your development over the latency period allowed you to enter the final genital phase. At this point, you learned to desire members of the opposite sex and to fulfill your instinct to procreate and thus ensure the
Dian 10 survival of the human species.‖ But then, at that age as well, he got a traumatic event, in which Annabel died.
Since his father had left him with little knowledge about sex, he was confused of his feelings towards Annabel. He actually did not know whether it was normal or not to have that kind of feelings and desires, because he thought that his desires was too excessive. This is shown by the following quotation when he was thinking of his desire toward Annabel when he was a teenager.
“....that the rift in my life began; or was my excessive desire for that child only the first evidence of an inherent singularity? (Nabokov 23) And because his excessive desire that was not fulfilled, it was so hard for him to let Annabel go. By the death of Annabel, it was clear that Humbert would feel so bad that it would unconsciously trap him in that state
Attracted to Lolita
Basically, Humbert‘s attraction to Lolita happened because he unconsciously aware that Lolita was an Annabel to him. How come? ―The ‗unconscious‘, as Freud called it, is a repository of repressed desires, feelings, memories, and instinctual drives, many of which, according to him, have to do with sexual and violence‖ (Rivkin dan Ryan). So, actually in
Humbert‘s unconscious mind, he still had the memory of Annabel. His desires, feelings, and memories of his sexuality behavior towards Annabel were still kept in his mind, so that when he finally met Lolita, those unconscious minds took a part for him to have the attraction.
When Humbert was talking about Lolita on their first meeting, he pictured Lolita as the same girl with Annabel, but it does not mean that Humbert consciously compared Lolita with
Annabel. That was just happened without him wanting it to be.
Dian 11
“It was the same child--the same frail, honey-hued shoulders, the same silky supple
bare back, the same chestnut head of hair.” (Nabokov)
That was what Humbert thought when he met Lolita for the first time. He was unconsciously seeing Lolita as the same child with Annabel. His memory was dragged back to the memory of him meeting Annabel.
Humbert happened to meet Dolores Haze, the daughter of Mrs. Haze who was the landlady where he was living in Ramsdale, when he had moved to the United States after he divorced with his wife. He was given his uncle‘s property after his death, so that he had to live in the United States. The first impression he saw from Lolita is her resemblance with
Annabel. He unconsciously thought that he had found Annabel again.
“It was the same child--the same frail, honey-hued shoulders, the same silky supple bare back, the same chestnut head of hair. A polka-dotted black handkerchief tied around her chest hid from my aging ape eyes, but not from the gaze of young memory, the juvenile breasts I had fondled one immortal day. And, as if I were the fairy-tale nurse of some little princess (lost, kidnapped, discovered in gypsy rags through which her nakedness smiled at the king and his hounds), I recognized the tiny dark-brown mole on her side. With awe and delight (the king crying for joy, the trumpets blaring, the nurse drunk) I saw again her lovely indrawn abdomen where my southbound mouth had briefly paused; and those puerile hips on which I had kissed the crenulated imprint left by the band of her shorts--that last mad immortal day behind the "Roches Roses." The twenty-five years I had lived since then, tapered to a palpitating point, and vanished.”(Nabokov)
Humbert said that he had ever experience the same feeling and attraction on a girl back then twenty five years ago, in which he was still a teenager. Unconsciously, he stated that he was still stuck in the moment when eagerly loved to be in love as a teenager. He said that he saw again Annabel‘s lovely indrawn abdomen and hips that he had kissed while they were still together when they were teenagers. But the condition and the fact is that he was no more a teenager, instead he was a middle-aged man. While Dolores Haze, who was told as
Lolita by Humbert, was twelve years old. It means that she was almost the same age with
Dian 12
Annabel when Humbert knew her. This is also one thing that made Humbert had the desire with Lolita.
According to Freud, the standstill is how Humbert could really have the desire with
Lolita as he had it with Annabel, ―It does also happen that persons may be brought to a complete standstill in life by a traumatic experience which has shaken the whole structure of their lives to the foundations (Freud 289).‖ This thing happened to Humbert, even before he met Lolita. Humbert‘s life was shaken by Annabel‘s death when he was a teenager in the state of having desire towards opposite sex. This grief and trauma has made Humbert‘s love life standstill in where he was just a thirteen-year-old boy so that he would have the attraction only to girls in the age of nine to fourteen. The following quotation was what Humbert said toward his attraction to teenage girls.
“Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as "nymphets." It will be marked that I substitute time terms for spatial ones. In fact, I would have the reader see "nine" and "fourteen" as the boundaries--the mirrory beaches and rosy rocks--of an enchanted island haunted by those nymphets of mine and surrounded by a vast, misty sea.” (Nabokov 28)
Thus, by knowing three things that had happened during Humbert‘s childhood, it can be seen that actually Humbert‘s pedophilia was not merely his own fault. As it has been explained, the grief that he had when his mother died, his father went away, and Annabel died were the cases that made Humbert to be a pedophile.
Dian 13
Conclusion
The main purpose of analyzing Humbert‘s pedophilia is to know whether
Psychoanalysis Criticism can see the traumatic events that affect his personality into becoming a pedophile. Humbert‘s pedophile was also derived from his biological drives in his teenage life that he was sexually attracted to Annabel in his thirteen.
Humbert‘s fixation towards girls in their teenage was derived by his grief and traumatic event when Annabel died, as matches to Freud theory that ―Grief is a prototype and perfect example of an affective fixation upon something that is past, and, like the neuroses, it also involves a state of complete alienation from the present and the future (Freud).‖ Thus, the conclusion is that Humbert‘s pedophilia happened because of his grief on the traumatic event made his sexual behavior stuck on the time when the traumatic event happened.
On the other hand, there are still very few research in literature discussing psychoanalysis comparing to other theories. Whereas, there are many possibilities to do some research on many other perspectives using Psychoanalysis Criticism, especially in Lolita. And by having this research done, I hope that my research would become a milestone for other research in psychoanalysis and Lolita in the future.
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Acknowledgment
This thesis would not be done without the support and help that I received. First let me praise ALLAH SWT who has mercy and blessing toward me. I will also express my gratitude toward my supervisor, Danielle Donelson-Sims, M.A who has patiently guide me in writing this thesis. I am also grateful toward the help of my thesis examiner, Ibu Lany
Kristono, M.Hum. Without their guidance, I know that I would not finish this thesis well.
My love and gratitude will also be expressed toward my family, Bapak, Ibu, and Dik Esti who have supported me and provided anything I needed during the time I wrote my thesis. Lastly, a bunch of thank will go to my best friends OCHKI (Lintang, Garnis, Eva, Novia), Agam,
Niners, and many other best friends who have supported me mentally to finish my thesis.
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Bibliography
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Barry, Peter. "Psychoanalytic Criticism."Beginning Theory: An introduction to literary and cultural theory. 2002. 184.
Dr. Sawitri Supardi Sadarjoen, psi. Bunga Rampai Kasus Gangguan Psikoseksual. Bandung: PT Refika Aditama, 2005.
Barry, Peter. "Psychoanalytic Criticism." Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An introduction to literary and cultural theory. 2002. 184.
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