"I was not quite prepared for the reality of my dual role. On the one hand, the willing corruptor of an innocent, and on the other, Humbert the happy housewife."
- Humbert Humbert from Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
Because inspiration for Lolita came partly from an article about an ape in a cage, a workable reading of the novel can be done with the aide of Jane Goodall’s, In the Shadow of Man, a study that the anthropologist conducted on chimpanzee behavior in the early 1970s. The study was written as if it were a chimpanzee soap opera – a number of individuals that belong to the same place, but that all have drastically different interests and are in constant contact with each other. With its scientific legitimacy and ability to provide comparable characters, Goodall’s book allows a peek at some of the primitive functions at work in Lolita within characters that appear refined on the surface.
Humbert Humbert is able to keep his cool for the most part, regulating his stirring thoughts and frustrations with academia. This coolness goes away at times, and is replaced by sudden urges to kill, as is true with his thoughts of murdering Valeria, murdering Charlotte, until he eventually follows through with the urge by actually acting on it in the end with Mr. Quilty. In this way, H.H. begins to resemble Mike, a chimpanzee that Goodall describes as “[unquestionably] intelligent” but also prone to outbursts of rage (Goodall 117-118). She provides an intriguing parallel between chimps and humans with the observation, to which H.H.’s character serves as a case in point:
It is one of the most striking aspects of chimpanzee society that creatures who can so quickly become roused to frenzies of excitement and aggression can for the most part maintain such relaxed and friendly relations with each other (Goodall 117).
In addition, H.H. can be attributed to Goodall’s chimps through Mike’s relationship with Flo, an older female chimp in the group. Mike attacks Flo violently by smashing her into submission with his fists, and then courts her in a relaxed and playful way, only to attack her again when he gets angry. The resentment out of contentment mentioned so far is furthered by this example, when Goodall notes that, “although a male chimpanzee is quick to threaten or attack a subordinate, he is usually equally quick to calm his victim with a touch, a pat on the back, an embrace of reassurance” (118). In Lolita, Charlotte is regarded by H.H. to be subordinate to him. He does not think of her character humanistically, but instead in a way that is objective, as he only wants to associate with her on the grounds that he can be near Lolita. He blatantly tells the reader (or, “the jury”) that, “...perhaps once or twice I had cast an appraiser’s cold eye at Charlotte’s coral lips and bronze hair and dangerously low neckline, and had vaguely tried to fit her into a plausible daydream” (Nabokov 70). Though not a physical pounding with the fists to show dominance, this mentality is a kind of mental domination, which in the human world can as equally effective as fist-pounding. After he has established himself in this way, H.H. marries Charlotte and then conspires to kill her. This oscillating mentality of love and hate are what make Mike and Humbert Humbert comparable figures.
The study can take on many different forms, but one that turns out to be funny is Chapter 14, “The Adolescent.” The female adolescent chimpanzee begins to swell up at her vagina at about nine years, ironically the age that Humbert Humbert says girls become nymphets. Though this observation is a comparable feature between the two narratives, a lit student should be careful while comparing nymphets to adolescent chimps since the latter are apt to “go pink” at the same time (girl scouts are not as predictable according to Humbert Humbert, who says that
the number of true nymphets is smaller than that of plain girls).
To sum up, primatology can be utilized in bridging the space between what is modern and what is primitive in American Literature. This space becomes unrecognizable at times when, on the surface, a character appears modern and civilized, while actually hiding primitive and less civilized inclinations. In the introduction to In the Shadow of Man, it is stated that apes are the best natural experiment that man will ever have in discovering the origins of his own behavior. The “physiological urges of the pervert” (Nabakov 316) is a starting point when considering this question in context of impulse and how this primordial force finds its place in the modern landscape.
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