Haze, Dolores

The second paragraph of Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, goes as fallows; “She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.” She is also Lolita on the cover of the book, in the very first word (both in the foreword and in the first chapter) of the book, and in the very last word of the book. She is Lolita throughout the story, Lolita is the story, or most of it. She must share space with these others, must occasionally allow Lo, or Dolly some time on the page. These are all just shortened versions of her doppelganger, of course; Dolores Haze, daughter of Charlotte Haze, resident of 342 Lawn street, student at Ramsdale school. The person that sits behind behind the fantasy of Lolita, the flesh and blood behind the ideal that Humbert Humbert creates in his own mind. Let us look at them, shall we? Let us spend some time, some space, examining the child who is both Lolita and Dolores Haze.

Now, in many ways, Dolores Haze is Lolita. She is physically Lolita, inhabiting the same space and the same body, undergoing the same car trips and sleeping in the same hotels. Etymologically Lolita is a diminutive form of Lola, which is a diminutive form of Dolores. Nabokov allows nothing within his books to be disconnected, nothing is without six different silken anchors, and the woman known as Haze is no exception. It is in the manner of storytelling, the nuances of character, that they are two separate beings, two distinct entities. They may act with one body, but two very separate minds. And they are acted upon in separate ways.

“Dolores” is an allusion to “Our Lady of Sorrows,” a name for the Virgin Mary that emphasizes the grief she went through. In using it for his character Nabokov is drawing a parallel between the pain and suffering the Virgin Mary went through, and that of Dolores. Dolores, who's mother is killed, whose innocence is taken, whose life is ruined. Who is ravaged by the monstrous Humbert Humbert, who is forced to leave her friends, her neighbors, and everything she knows.

We see, throughout the books, distinct breaks in behavior, both by and towards, the character when she is switching from Dolores to Lolita. Note that she was Dolores when Humbert was afraid she would “explode in screams if (he) touched her with any part of (his) wretchedness (129),” but Lolita once she seduced Humbert. “'Ok,' said Lolita, 'here is where we start(129),'” there is a clear break between the persons of Dolores, whom Humbert is afraid to touch, and Lolita, who is a more brazen type. She is Dolores when attending Beardsley college, Dolores to her friends, but Lolita at home, to Humbert. Unless he is mad at her. “Dolores, this must stop right away (205),” he says to her, but when she runs out into the night, it is Lolita, the willful nymphet, that he chases after. She is Dolly when rehearsing the school play, she is Lolita when choosing to leave it. They are two very separate people; one the happy, normal schoolchild, the talented actress and good friend. The other the sexual nymphet, the cunning manipulator who uses her body to get the favors she wants from Humbert. She is Dr. Schoolgirl and Miss. Nymphet.

It is not, of course, all her own doing, this transformation, the forces acting upon her shape her to a great degree, and that is reflected in the uses of her names. When Humbert first moves into the house of her mother, she is Lolita- and Dolores, and Dolly, but Lolita prevailed. She is Lolita while Humbert drivers her around the country, Lolita when he bleeds unto paper in his jail cell, Lolita throughout almost the whole book. She is Dolores, when Humbert finds her after she has run away, Lolita again when trying to talk her back into his life. Then, she is no longer his Lolita, but only Dolores, once called Haze but now Schiller. From that point on it is only in recollection that she is Lolita.

The last name of the child, Haze, suggests that she is nothing more than a vague perception, a blurry image, hard to focus on. Humbert, certainly, seems to have a hard time seeing her as Dolores, as anything other than the nymphet image he has in his mind. Readers, though, should pay more attention to this atmospheric distortion, this girl-child. One of the sorrows Our Lady of Sorrows has to endure is the ignoring of the masses, the indifference of the reader. The book starts with Lolita, the book ends with Lolita, but always remember that there is another that walks the pages between.