Finding Herself:Reading Lolita As An Initiation Novel

Vladimir Nabokov is an outstanding novelist, a prolific writer in the20th century. He is also a translator, critic and poet. In all of his works, Lolita is the most influential but the most controversial one. It is this novel Lolita that has earned a good fame for Vladimir Nabokov in the whole world.Lolita has attracted much of the attention of the literary world since its first publication. Many scholars have given their own analysis and interpretation of this shocking and astonishing work from a variety of theoretical perspectives. They have studied a great many aspects such as the ethical issues, linguistic style and narrative skills of the novel. The image of the heroine Lolita has been rooted deeply in the reader’s heart. However, most of the researchers regard her simply as an unethical and unhealthy underage female. Few of them have devoted their attention to her growth through the course of the story.The present author acknowledges that the novel has depicted Lolita’s tragic life, but she also asserts that the novel delineates the difficulties Lolita is faced with in her initiation and records the process of her growth. This thesis, based on theories about the initiation novel and a close reading of the novel, is to reveal the process of Lolita’s growth from a girl lacking in self-awareness into a mature woman, thereby to foreground the realistic significance of Nabokov’s works.The thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter One is the introduction, which briefly introduces Nabokov’s life and his major works, and describes the situation of domestic and foreign research on Lolita. It also explains the theoretical basis of this paper and its structure.Chapters Two to Four make up the body of the thesis. Chapter Two analyzes the factors contributing to Lolita’s lack of self-awareness. Lack of family care, ineffective school education and corrupted social environment all create obstacles to her healthy growth.Chapter Three reveals the evidence for the budding and growing of Lolita’s self-awareness. As she grows older, her female self-consciousness allows her to gradually learn the right ethics, so that she begins to revolt against the patriarchal authority and incest relationship.Chapter Four deals with the factors leading to Lolita’s finding herself. The maturity of Lolita’s body and psychology endow her with strength to pursue true love. She struggles to obtain a real love and her family life to realize self-fulfillment.The last chapter is the conclusion. It summarizes the previous discussions and restates the viewpoint of the thesis. It also points out that Lolita has demonstrated the disastrous effects of the inadequacies of family, school and society on the healthy growth of children, and as such, it is realistically significant and thought-provoking to the whole world.