The Tale of Enchanted Hunters: Lolita in Victorian Context

Enigmatic murals on the walls of the Enchanted Hunters Hotel create an ambiguous setting for Lolita's "seduction" of Humbert. Images of hunters entranced by a young nymph imply Lolita's putting a spell on her lover and seem to support Humbert's idea of the innate viciousness of his nymphet. Why did Nabokov need such a paradoxical inversion of his presentation of Lolita as a "courageous victim"? This article attempts to solve the puzzle by analyzing the novel's references to John Ruskin and Lewis Carroll as notorious admirers of young girls. It also points out such Victorian contexts as the Oxford Union Murals created by Pre-Raphaelites in 1857 under Ruskin's guidance and The Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, on which the frescos were based. The accumulation of textual and intertextual clues leads to the interpretation of Lolita as Nabokov's critical commentary to the Victorian discourse on art, beauty, and child sexuality.