Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita was published in 1955 in English by the Belarusian-born
author. The novel depicts a unique relationship: the love affair between a professor
of literature in his 40s and a very young girl of only twelve. Whether or not Lolita
is a love story is obviously a matter of interpretation, but from the point of view
of the novel’s protagonist, Humbert Humbert, we can say that it is. Whether this attraction
to such a young girl is socially, morally and sexually healthy is not for a literary
essay to decide. Writing about moral issues in a novel based on a fictional story
is always a challenge. When it is a text that has literally kept the reading public,
critics and the general public in suspense since its publication, it is even more
exciting. But in defining the purpose of this paper, we must formulate our hypothesis.
In Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita, we will examine the ethical issues raised by the
story of the novel, but we will also aim to carry out a thorough examination of the
work. If we start from the concept that a hero of a novel is fictional, we cannot
hold him accountable for his sins. It is a well-known fact that the ethical readability
of Nabokov’s oeuvre is a much more complex issue than the author’s categorical statements
of the writer. In this paper, we will examine the text. First, from the point of view
of the representation of the body, and then, with the help of the currents of literature,
we will try to determine whether the correct understanding of the text is hindered
or facilitated by the moral judgement of the character’s behaviour.
