Response # 5 Humbert's methods of self-justification

Issue: Humbert's methods of self-justification

Passage 1:
pp. 17-18:
Furthermore, since the idea of time plays such a magic part in the

matter, the student should not be surprised to learn that there must be a

gap of several years, never less than ten I should say, generally thirty or

forty, and as many as ninety in a few known cases, between maiden and man to

enable the latter to come under a nymphet's spell. It is a question of focal

adjustment, of a certain distance that the inner eye thrills to surmount,

and a certain contrast that the mind perceives with a gasp of perverse

delight. When I was a child and she was a child, my little Annabel was no

nymphet to me; I was her equal, a faunlet in my own right, on that same

enchanted island of time; but today, in September 1952, after twenty-nine

years have elapsed, I think I can distinguish in her the initial fateful elf

in my life.


Passage 2:
pp. 19-20
But let us be prim and civilized. Humbert Humbert tried hard to be

good. Really and truly, he did. He had the utmost respect for ordinary

children, with their purity and vulnerability, and under no circumstances

would he have interfered with the innocence of a child, if there was the

least risk of a row. But how his heart beat when, among the innocent throng,

he espied a demon child, "enfant charmante et fourbe," dim eyes,

bright lips, ten years in jail if you only show her you are looking at her.

So life went. Humbert was perfectly capable of intercourse with Eve, but it

was Lilith he longed for. The bud-stage of breast development appears early

(10.7 years) in the sequence of somatic changes accompanying pubescence. And

the next maturational item available is the first appearance of pigmented

pubic hair (11.2 years). My little cup brims with tiddles.

Passage 3:
pp. 18-19
All this I rationalize now. In my twenties and early thirties, I did not understand my throes quite so clearly. While my body knew what it craved for, my mind rejected my body's every plea. One moment I was ashamed and frightened, another recklessly optimistic. Taboos strangled me. Psychoanalysts wooed me with pseudoliberations of pseudolibidoes. The fact to me the only objects of amorous tremor were sisters of Annabel's, her handmaids and girl-pages, appeared to me at times as a fore-runner of insanity. At other times I would tell myself that it was all a question of attitude, that there was really nothing wrong in being moved to distraction by girl-children.

All three of these passages demonstrate Humbert justifying his overwhelming lust for girl-children, or as he would call them, nymphets. In the first passage he minimizes his perverted lusting by saying it's just a matter of altering one's "focal adjustment". Humbert consistently rationalizes his sickness by bringing his audience's attention to how hard he tried to not molest little girls. In the second passage he tries to gain sympathy from his audience by focusing on how he would have sex with age appropriate women instead of "nymphets". He tries to gain sympathy and kudos for not molesting little girls- which is just head-shakingly shamelessly pitiful, like we are really going to pat you on the back for normal sexual relations. The third passage Humbert lays his fault all out on the table, but still justifies his emotional fight as an inevitable effect of which Annabel is to blame.