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----- Forwarded message from spklein52@hotmail.com -----
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 07:28:34 -0500
From: "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@hotmail.com>
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/02/10/133906.php[1] the
chrysalis factor | lolita & now voyager
Blogcritics.org - 17 hours ago
... I suppose we all have our favorite reads and our favorite films,
and though NABOKOV is certainly my favorite author, Now Voyager
though , it may be a great ...
THE CHRYSALIS FACTOR | LOLITA & NOW VOYAGER
Posted by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti[2] on February 10, 2005 01:39 PM
(See all posts by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti[3])
Filed under: Video[4] - SCROLL DOWN TO READ COMMENTS ON THIS STORY[5]
AND/OR ADD ONE OF YOUR OWN.
[6]
_Lolita[7]_
DVD from _Vidmark/Trimark_
Release date: 05 February, 2002
Why is it that I turn to Now Voyager again and again and certain
books like Lolita. I suppose we all have our favorite reads and our
favorite films, and though Nabokov is certainly my favorite author,
Now Voyager though , it may be a great, old Hollywood production, is
also one of the hokiest films I have ever seen. Still, the film holds
and as I watched recently I couldnÂ’t help but see the surprising
similarties between the two stories – between the nymphet and the
spinster aunt, both stuck in their cocoons and both subjects of the
tyranny of others.
There exists in all of us an Aunt Charlotte, a Carlotta with bushy
eyebrows and the long hair and the ugly dress that other mother made
us wear and our sensible work shoes and god help us, our glasses!
We are the geeks of the girls, the LolitaÂ’s in school, who werenÂ’t
the most pretty perhaps, but certainly had the geeky awkwardness of
what Nabokov would have called a “true nymphet” attractive only to a
man of “infinite melancholy”. True nymphets are discernable by
certain “ineffable signs” he tells us: “the slight feline outline of
the cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limbÂ… the little deadly
demon among the wholesome children.”
And what is Aunt Charlotte but a bad Hollywood version of a would-be
Lolita, though she is portrayed as the aunt, which is a slightly
different role, for the aunt is always undesirable. She is everyoneÂ’s
friend, she takes the brunt of the jokes and remains silent,
self-medicating with brandy and cigarettes in her own room. Thank
good for Dr. Jackworth who turns up and takes Aunt Charlotte away
from her domineering mother to his retreat in the country where
Charlotte, played by the beautiful Betty Davis, may be “looking
unwell” because “she’s lost a great deal of weight” (for the record,
she is now about a Hollywood size 8, ah, how we long for the days
when sizes were logical and women were allowed to have curves and
breasts and boy, isnÂ’t Bette Davis just the perfect example, all tits
and hips and those damn eyes that Kim Carnes wrote about, sheÂ’s a
killer and she doesnÂ’tÂ’ know it. She still sees herself as the
hopeless aunt whom nobody will ever want. A persona non grata,
unwanted by her own mother (a child of my old age, the mother says),
What is left for Aunt Charlotte after her miraculous recovery at
Doctor JackworthÂ’s country escape but to go on a cruise, which she
does under a relativeÂ’s name, for reasons that are unclear; perhaps
because she is still uncomfortable in her own skin. Still, when Bette
Davis walks onto that ship while everyone is awaiting her arrival
before they can depart, one cannot help but stare and stare. The
camera stops at the feet and pans up and there she is, Bette Davis in
a tight-fitting suit, gone is the foulard, the sensible shoes, the
geek glasses (oh the envy I feel at this), the bushy eyebrows have
been plucked or whatever they did back then and the hair has been
bleached that beautiful “hollow gold” as Carnes called it. Doesn’t
Paul Henreid luck out when he is paired with Ms. Renee Beauchamps, as
she is called on the cruise, since everyone must have a partner with
whom to tour the various island stops.
Jeremiah Duveaux Darrence – or Jarry – or J.D.; names are big in
this film, for Carlotta, she introducers herself as
It's aunt...every family has one you know.” she also refers to
herself as “a spinster aunt” when J.D. asks for her help in selecting
gifts for his young girls and his family.
So much of this film is about who you think you are, as opposed to
whom you really are, which in some ways relates back to the piece I
recently wrote about facades and levels of selves.
Clearly Aunt Charlotte was and is more than just a dumpy aunt;
beneath all that hair and sensible clothing was all along a real a
killer, who needed only to drop a few pounds and have bleach and wax
job and a new wardrobe. For Charlotte, the outward aspects were
really that simple because like any nymphet, aunts and nymphets alike
live in a kind of chrysalis until they bloom into fabulous and
beautiful and highly desirable Lolitas and Camilles, whom Nabokov
wrote, cause in certain men a “bubble of hot poison in the loins and
a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine.” Not
bad for a spinster aunt and a geeky teenager with a retainer and
overly long legs and knock-knees.
Nabokov gives us our Lolita with all of her easy charm and awkward
grace which somehow all works to marvelous affect – all of her
contradictions that make her who she is - and Now Voyager gives us
Camille (note: J.DÂ’s name for Charlotte is Camille). Both are Lolita
and Camilla butterflies and itÂ’s no surprise that fritillary imagery
is used in both Lolita and in Now Voyager or that NabokovÂ’s primary
love in life was butterfly collecting, always in search of the
elusive blues, about which there is an entire thick volume complete
with plates and NabokovÂ’s own field notes.
The point here is transformation, of course, and emerging from
something constraining – that tight-fitting cocoon that keeps you
stuck, trapped where you donÂ’t want to be but canÂ’t find your way
out. But the point too is that transformation, metamorphosis is in
fact, possible and almost inevitable. That a mother (in both stories)
can keep her nymphet or her daughter in a cocoon for only so long
before nature takes its course and the beautiful blue butterfly
emerges, all wings and grace, a real painted lady. Humbert, in
Lolita, does not want his Lolita to change – to emerge from her
cocoon. He would keep her forever relegated to the perfect nymphet
age on the cusp of pubescence, like some spayed half-woman because a
woman like this, if you can even call her that, is “safe” and poses
no threat and if he gets off, this is likely but one of the reasons
why. That Lolita has the power all along is of no surprise to any
woman who ahs read the book. But it is also true that Lolita is still
a victim, for she cannot consent for various reasons.
For starters, sheÂ’s too young to consent to anything adult and has a
perfectly natural crush on her step-father, who isnÂ’t even really
that. HeÂ’s just some handsome stranger who came to stay at the house
(perfectly portrayed by Jeremy Irons, if you havenÂ’t seen this modern
adaptation of Lolita, I highly recommend it), and secondly, Lolita has
just lost her mother and been removed from everything she had known
her entire life – her friends, her neighborhood, her house, her
family. She is traveling, full-speed ahead across the country on the
run with a man who though yes, he loves her on some level, is still a
bit of pervert to say the very least.
What Nabokov does to threaten us in a way, to make us complicit, and
the threatening thing about the film adaptation of _Lolita_ with
Jeremy Irons and cast is that Humbert Humbert _is_ an attractive and
charming and desirable man and one can easily see how any teenage
girl would be attracted to such a man. It makes sense and by making
us see this, by making us see LolitaÂ’s come-hither stares and pouts
and even tantrums all designed for HumbertÂ’s attention, we are made
by the author complicit in the crime of incest and rape.
We keep reading. Most of us ] not yet horrified, we see LolitaÂ’s
role as much as HumbertÂ’s (to _not_ see it would be to give the book
a shallow read, but again, this does not mean that she can consent to
anything that happens; she is still a victim here, though confusingly
so is Humbert – though he more of circumstance.) The best we can say
of Humbert is that he is so pathetic, so desperately in love with his
nymphet, his ideas of who she is and the memory of Annabel from long
ago (a childhood memory) that he is slave to his own pathology. He
lives in constant dread of LolitaÂ’s eventual and inevitable growing
up - her metamorphosis and eventual leaving of him, and we can only
watch as he begins to slowly lose his mind.
The same is true of Charlotte Vale in _Now Voyager_ only this time,
it is the mother who keeps her confined in her cocoon. In Now
Voyager, we are told time and time again that “every family has one,
you know… a spinster aunt” and somewhere in there, perhaps we see a
bit of ourselves, or I suspect that some women who see the film and
like it see themselves at some point in their life, if not now, then
years prior.
Mother Vale, like Humbert Humbert, wants to keep her chrysalis
intact. She does not want any metamorphosis on her watch and she will
not have her own daughter changing into an independent and most
importantly, _free_ individual, and while one may not have thought to
compare Now Voyager and Lolita at first glance, on closer inspection
the two stories are not dissimilar. Charlotte Vale is not a victim of
incest, true, and nor is she raped, but she is a victim of a kind of
emotional abuse at the hands of her own mother who tries to control
everything, including her daughterÂ’s sexuality, that this almost
borders on a kind of emotional incest. When Charlotte returns from
her cruise, a full-=fledged butterfly, in love with J.D. wearing her
Jolie Fleur perfume that he bought her with her hourglass figure and
the rest of it, the mother wishes to attribute the change to “severe
illness” in which “after severe illness one often loses one’s hair
and eyebrows.” she is also told to “wear your glasses, that way
you’ll be less of a shock to the others” at the party they are having
to welcome Charlotte home.
Instead of being praised for her great emersion and “recovery”
(which is really simply breaking out of the chrysalis and the family
role of “aunt”), Charlotte is told she looks worse, looks ill, that
she must obey her mother and keep up her family duties. She is there
as a “guest” but one who must also be at the foot of her mother at
all times to be at her call. Likewise, Lolita as she gets older and
attends school and even begins to see, and by see I mean notice, not
actually engage with, boys her own age, Humbert tries all the harder
to shove her back in and then zip up tight her cocoon so she may
never escape again.
As for the mother in _Now Voyager_, like Humbert sheÂ’ll use any
manipulative device she can to keep her daughter (note in both cases
we are talking about a daughter - Lolita is HumbertÂ’s step-child).
Mother Vale tosses herself down the stairs when she doesnÂ’t get her
way at CharlotteÂ’s welcome home party, at which Charlotte refuses to
put back on her foulard and her glasses. ItÂ’s a minor injury she gets
– a torn ligament, but it’s the fact of the doing that astounds us
most. That another person would go to such great lengths to control
another. Humbert has his devices too, including temper tantrums, long
apologies that no doubt are sincere but that change nothing, sex that
seems at times almost violent (and letÂ’s not forget that every time
it is legally rape); these are people who are unable to bear life
without the person who on the surface seems the weaker of the two. AS
long as they are in their cocoon, even they may believe this is true,
just as Charlotte believed for so long that she was no more than the
spinster aunt and Lolita and ugly duckling.
Neither is true, but that both believe such nonsense goes a long way
to telling us the lengths others will go to simply to control us and
keep us near them, the weaker of the two. This may not seem obvious
on the surface, but on closer inspection, it becomes clear that in
each case, it is the nymphet and the spinster aunt who holds all the
cards. Charlotte ValeÂ’s moment comes the moment she realizes that she
is “not afraid” which she finally summons the courage to say to her
own mother.
Not being afraid is what it is all about, for if you stay afraid,
then in the seeming and relative safety of the cocoon youÂ’ll remain.
What you fail to see is that break free from the cocoon, shed the
granny glasses and the pounds and the silly clothes that you know
donÂ’t suit you and youÂ’ll soon realize the incredible power you have,
just as Humbert realizes the incredible power of his nymphets and no
doubt, Mother Vale sees the magnificent radiance of not Aunt
Charlotte who returns home from her Rio pleasure cruise but this
Camille – radiant as the sun.
The choice to stay in the cocoon is almost always in the hands of
the subject, not the third or second party trying so hard to control
the situation to get their desired outcome. That person will say and
do anything to keep you there in that cocoon. It is manipulation at
itÂ’s finest or ugliest, depending on your point of view, but either
way, itÂ’s not the way things will naturally want to be.
One cannot stop the metamorphosis forever, or they can, but only if
you let them out of some sense of duty or guilt or fear of whatever.
One must believe just as Charlotte eventually does, and as Lolita,
though sadly, Lolita was damaged too young to ever recover fully from
her fatherÂ’s manipulation and her own fear and inhibitions. Remember
what Nabokov said about his nymphets, that in the midst of others
“she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious of her fantastic
power.”
MORE FINE READING AT BLOGCRITICS.ORG[8]. SCROLL DOWN TO READ COMMENTS
ON THIS STORY AND/OR ADD ONE OF YOUR OWN. SUPPORT BLOGCRITICS.ORG BY
SHOPPING AT AMAZON.COM[9] FROM THIS PAGE.
[10]
_Lolita[11]_
DVD from _Vidmark/Trimark_
Release date: 05 February, 2002
[12]
_Now, Voyager[13]_
DVD from _Warner Studios_
Release date: 13 November, 2001
_(Amazon information updated at Thu, 10 Feb 2005 13:42:16 -0500)_
Links:
------
[1] http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/02/10/133906.php
[2] http://www.tantmieux.squarespace.com/
[3] http://blogcritics.org/author.php?author=Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti
[4] http://blogcritics.org/category.php?category=57
[5] HTTP://BLOGCRITICS.ORG/ARCHIVES/2005/02/10/133906.PHP#COMMENTS
[6]
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00001IVFG/blogcriticsco-20
[7]
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00001IVFG/blogcriticsco-20
[8] HTTP://BLOGCRITICS.ORG/
[9] HTTP://WWW.AMAZON.COM/EXEC/OBIDOS/REDIRECT-HOME/BLOGCRITICSCO-20
[10]
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00001IVFG/blogcriticsco-20
[11]
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00001IVFG/blogcriticsco-20
[12]
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005NRO1/blogcriticsco-20
[13]
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005NRO1/blogcriticsco-20
----- End forwarded message -----
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 07:28:34 -0500
From: "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@hotmail.com>
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/02/10/133906.php[1] the
chrysalis factor | lolita & now voyager
Blogcritics.org - 17 hours ago
... I suppose we all have our favorite reads and our favorite films,
and though NABOKOV is certainly my favorite author, Now Voyager
though , it may be a great ...
THE CHRYSALIS FACTOR | LOLITA & NOW VOYAGER
Posted by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti[2] on February 10, 2005 01:39 PM
(See all posts by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti[3])
Filed under: Video[4] - SCROLL DOWN TO READ COMMENTS ON THIS STORY[5]
AND/OR ADD ONE OF YOUR OWN.
[6]
_Lolita[7]_
DVD from _Vidmark/Trimark_
Release date: 05 February, 2002
Why is it that I turn to Now Voyager again and again and certain
books like Lolita. I suppose we all have our favorite reads and our
favorite films, and though Nabokov is certainly my favorite author,
Now Voyager though , it may be a great, old Hollywood production, is
also one of the hokiest films I have ever seen. Still, the film holds
and as I watched recently I couldnÂ’t help but see the surprising
similarties between the two stories – between the nymphet and the
spinster aunt, both stuck in their cocoons and both subjects of the
tyranny of others.
There exists in all of us an Aunt Charlotte, a Carlotta with bushy
eyebrows and the long hair and the ugly dress that other mother made
us wear and our sensible work shoes and god help us, our glasses!
We are the geeks of the girls, the LolitaÂ’s in school, who werenÂ’t
the most pretty perhaps, but certainly had the geeky awkwardness of
what Nabokov would have called a “true nymphet” attractive only to a
man of “infinite melancholy”. True nymphets are discernable by
certain “ineffable signs” he tells us: “the slight feline outline of
the cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limbÂ… the little deadly
demon among the wholesome children.”
And what is Aunt Charlotte but a bad Hollywood version of a would-be
Lolita, though she is portrayed as the aunt, which is a slightly
different role, for the aunt is always undesirable. She is everyoneÂ’s
friend, she takes the brunt of the jokes and remains silent,
self-medicating with brandy and cigarettes in her own room. Thank
good for Dr. Jackworth who turns up and takes Aunt Charlotte away
from her domineering mother to his retreat in the country where
Charlotte, played by the beautiful Betty Davis, may be “looking
unwell” because “she’s lost a great deal of weight” (for the record,
she is now about a Hollywood size 8, ah, how we long for the days
when sizes were logical and women were allowed to have curves and
breasts and boy, isnÂ’t Bette Davis just the perfect example, all tits
and hips and those damn eyes that Kim Carnes wrote about, sheÂ’s a
killer and she doesnÂ’tÂ’ know it. She still sees herself as the
hopeless aunt whom nobody will ever want. A persona non grata,
unwanted by her own mother (a child of my old age, the mother says),
What is left for Aunt Charlotte after her miraculous recovery at
Doctor JackworthÂ’s country escape but to go on a cruise, which she
does under a relativeÂ’s name, for reasons that are unclear; perhaps
because she is still uncomfortable in her own skin. Still, when Bette
Davis walks onto that ship while everyone is awaiting her arrival
before they can depart, one cannot help but stare and stare. The
camera stops at the feet and pans up and there she is, Bette Davis in
a tight-fitting suit, gone is the foulard, the sensible shoes, the
geek glasses (oh the envy I feel at this), the bushy eyebrows have
been plucked or whatever they did back then and the hair has been
bleached that beautiful “hollow gold” as Carnes called it. Doesn’t
Paul Henreid luck out when he is paired with Ms. Renee Beauchamps, as
she is called on the cruise, since everyone must have a partner with
whom to tour the various island stops.
Jeremiah Duveaux Darrence – or Jarry – or J.D.; names are big in
this film, for Carlotta, she introducers herself as
It's aunt...every family has one you know.” she also refers to
herself as “a spinster aunt” when J.D. asks for her help in selecting
gifts for his young girls and his family.
So much of this film is about who you think you are, as opposed to
whom you really are, which in some ways relates back to the piece I
recently wrote about facades and levels of selves.
Clearly Aunt Charlotte was and is more than just a dumpy aunt;
beneath all that hair and sensible clothing was all along a real a
killer, who needed only to drop a few pounds and have bleach and wax
job and a new wardrobe. For Charlotte, the outward aspects were
really that simple because like any nymphet, aunts and nymphets alike
live in a kind of chrysalis until they bloom into fabulous and
beautiful and highly desirable Lolitas and Camilles, whom Nabokov
wrote, cause in certain men a “bubble of hot poison in the loins and
a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine.” Not
bad for a spinster aunt and a geeky teenager with a retainer and
overly long legs and knock-knees.
Nabokov gives us our Lolita with all of her easy charm and awkward
grace which somehow all works to marvelous affect – all of her
contradictions that make her who she is - and Now Voyager gives us
Camille (note: J.DÂ’s name for Charlotte is Camille). Both are Lolita
and Camilla butterflies and itÂ’s no surprise that fritillary imagery
is used in both Lolita and in Now Voyager or that NabokovÂ’s primary
love in life was butterfly collecting, always in search of the
elusive blues, about which there is an entire thick volume complete
with plates and NabokovÂ’s own field notes.
The point here is transformation, of course, and emerging from
something constraining – that tight-fitting cocoon that keeps you
stuck, trapped where you donÂ’t want to be but canÂ’t find your way
out. But the point too is that transformation, metamorphosis is in
fact, possible and almost inevitable. That a mother (in both stories)
can keep her nymphet or her daughter in a cocoon for only so long
before nature takes its course and the beautiful blue butterfly
emerges, all wings and grace, a real painted lady. Humbert, in
Lolita, does not want his Lolita to change – to emerge from her
cocoon. He would keep her forever relegated to the perfect nymphet
age on the cusp of pubescence, like some spayed half-woman because a
woman like this, if you can even call her that, is “safe” and poses
no threat and if he gets off, this is likely but one of the reasons
why. That Lolita has the power all along is of no surprise to any
woman who ahs read the book. But it is also true that Lolita is still
a victim, for she cannot consent for various reasons.
For starters, sheÂ’s too young to consent to anything adult and has a
perfectly natural crush on her step-father, who isnÂ’t even really
that. HeÂ’s just some handsome stranger who came to stay at the house
(perfectly portrayed by Jeremy Irons, if you havenÂ’t seen this modern
adaptation of Lolita, I highly recommend it), and secondly, Lolita has
just lost her mother and been removed from everything she had known
her entire life – her friends, her neighborhood, her house, her
family. She is traveling, full-speed ahead across the country on the
run with a man who though yes, he loves her on some level, is still a
bit of pervert to say the very least.
What Nabokov does to threaten us in a way, to make us complicit, and
the threatening thing about the film adaptation of _Lolita_ with
Jeremy Irons and cast is that Humbert Humbert _is_ an attractive and
charming and desirable man and one can easily see how any teenage
girl would be attracted to such a man. It makes sense and by making
us see this, by making us see LolitaÂ’s come-hither stares and pouts
and even tantrums all designed for HumbertÂ’s attention, we are made
by the author complicit in the crime of incest and rape.
We keep reading. Most of us ] not yet horrified, we see LolitaÂ’s
role as much as HumbertÂ’s (to _not_ see it would be to give the book
a shallow read, but again, this does not mean that she can consent to
anything that happens; she is still a victim here, though confusingly
so is Humbert – though he more of circumstance.) The best we can say
of Humbert is that he is so pathetic, so desperately in love with his
nymphet, his ideas of who she is and the memory of Annabel from long
ago (a childhood memory) that he is slave to his own pathology. He
lives in constant dread of LolitaÂ’s eventual and inevitable growing
up - her metamorphosis and eventual leaving of him, and we can only
watch as he begins to slowly lose his mind.
The same is true of Charlotte Vale in _Now Voyager_ only this time,
it is the mother who keeps her confined in her cocoon. In Now
Voyager, we are told time and time again that “every family has one,
you know… a spinster aunt” and somewhere in there, perhaps we see a
bit of ourselves, or I suspect that some women who see the film and
like it see themselves at some point in their life, if not now, then
years prior.
Mother Vale, like Humbert Humbert, wants to keep her chrysalis
intact. She does not want any metamorphosis on her watch and she will
not have her own daughter changing into an independent and most
importantly, _free_ individual, and while one may not have thought to
compare Now Voyager and Lolita at first glance, on closer inspection
the two stories are not dissimilar. Charlotte Vale is not a victim of
incest, true, and nor is she raped, but she is a victim of a kind of
emotional abuse at the hands of her own mother who tries to control
everything, including her daughterÂ’s sexuality, that this almost
borders on a kind of emotional incest. When Charlotte returns from
her cruise, a full-=fledged butterfly, in love with J.D. wearing her
Jolie Fleur perfume that he bought her with her hourglass figure and
the rest of it, the mother wishes to attribute the change to “severe
illness” in which “after severe illness one often loses one’s hair
and eyebrows.” she is also told to “wear your glasses, that way
you’ll be less of a shock to the others” at the party they are having
to welcome Charlotte home.
Instead of being praised for her great emersion and “recovery”
(which is really simply breaking out of the chrysalis and the family
role of “aunt”), Charlotte is told she looks worse, looks ill, that
she must obey her mother and keep up her family duties. She is there
as a “guest” but one who must also be at the foot of her mother at
all times to be at her call. Likewise, Lolita as she gets older and
attends school and even begins to see, and by see I mean notice, not
actually engage with, boys her own age, Humbert tries all the harder
to shove her back in and then zip up tight her cocoon so she may
never escape again.
As for the mother in _Now Voyager_, like Humbert sheÂ’ll use any
manipulative device she can to keep her daughter (note in both cases
we are talking about a daughter - Lolita is HumbertÂ’s step-child).
Mother Vale tosses herself down the stairs when she doesnÂ’t get her
way at CharlotteÂ’s welcome home party, at which Charlotte refuses to
put back on her foulard and her glasses. ItÂ’s a minor injury she gets
– a torn ligament, but it’s the fact of the doing that astounds us
most. That another person would go to such great lengths to control
another. Humbert has his devices too, including temper tantrums, long
apologies that no doubt are sincere but that change nothing, sex that
seems at times almost violent (and letÂ’s not forget that every time
it is legally rape); these are people who are unable to bear life
without the person who on the surface seems the weaker of the two. AS
long as they are in their cocoon, even they may believe this is true,
just as Charlotte believed for so long that she was no more than the
spinster aunt and Lolita and ugly duckling.
Neither is true, but that both believe such nonsense goes a long way
to telling us the lengths others will go to simply to control us and
keep us near them, the weaker of the two. This may not seem obvious
on the surface, but on closer inspection, it becomes clear that in
each case, it is the nymphet and the spinster aunt who holds all the
cards. Charlotte ValeÂ’s moment comes the moment she realizes that she
is “not afraid” which she finally summons the courage to say to her
own mother.
Not being afraid is what it is all about, for if you stay afraid,
then in the seeming and relative safety of the cocoon youÂ’ll remain.
What you fail to see is that break free from the cocoon, shed the
granny glasses and the pounds and the silly clothes that you know
donÂ’t suit you and youÂ’ll soon realize the incredible power you have,
just as Humbert realizes the incredible power of his nymphets and no
doubt, Mother Vale sees the magnificent radiance of not Aunt
Charlotte who returns home from her Rio pleasure cruise but this
Camille – radiant as the sun.
The choice to stay in the cocoon is almost always in the hands of
the subject, not the third or second party trying so hard to control
the situation to get their desired outcome. That person will say and
do anything to keep you there in that cocoon. It is manipulation at
itÂ’s finest or ugliest, depending on your point of view, but either
way, itÂ’s not the way things will naturally want to be.
One cannot stop the metamorphosis forever, or they can, but only if
you let them out of some sense of duty or guilt or fear of whatever.
One must believe just as Charlotte eventually does, and as Lolita,
though sadly, Lolita was damaged too young to ever recover fully from
her fatherÂ’s manipulation and her own fear and inhibitions. Remember
what Nabokov said about his nymphets, that in the midst of others
“she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious of her fantastic
power.”
MORE FINE READING AT BLOGCRITICS.ORG[8]. SCROLL DOWN TO READ COMMENTS
ON THIS STORY AND/OR ADD ONE OF YOUR OWN. SUPPORT BLOGCRITICS.ORG BY
SHOPPING AT AMAZON.COM[9] FROM THIS PAGE.
[10]
_Lolita[11]_
DVD from _Vidmark/Trimark_
Release date: 05 February, 2002
[12]
_Now, Voyager[13]_
DVD from _Warner Studios_
Release date: 13 November, 2001
_(Amazon information updated at Thu, 10 Feb 2005 13:42:16 -0500)_
Links:
------
[1] http://blogcritics.org/archives/2005/02/10/133906.php
[2] http://www.tantmieux.squarespace.com/
[3] http://blogcritics.org/author.php?author=Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti
[4] http://blogcritics.org/category.php?category=57
[5] HTTP://BLOGCRITICS.ORG/ARCHIVES/2005/02/10/133906.PHP#COMMENTS
[6]
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00001IVFG/blogcriticsco-20
[7]
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00001IVFG/blogcriticsco-20
[8] HTTP://BLOGCRITICS.ORG/
[9] HTTP://WWW.AMAZON.COM/EXEC/OBIDOS/REDIRECT-HOME/BLOGCRITICSCO-20
[10]
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00001IVFG/blogcriticsco-20
[11]
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00001IVFG/blogcriticsco-20
[12]
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005NRO1/blogcriticsco-20
[13]
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005NRO1/blogcriticsco-20
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