Humbert Humbert - Really a pedophile?

Was Humbert Humbert really a pedophile? In the end of Lolita we find out:

That he is still in love with Lolita even though she is an adult and pregnant. We also have no evidence that he had sexual attraction to anyone after Lolita. So, while at one time his sexual preference was for girl children but later he was only attracted to Lolita who is an adult. It seems clear that Lolita was the love of his life whether she was an adult or a child.

Considering the above, is he really a pedophile or is more fair to say he was at one time a pedophile but by the end he was not.

Humbert was married to a young Polish woman in her late twenties named Valeria, before he divorced her and came to America.

After Lolita leaves Humbert, he does have a two-year affair with a woman in her mid-20s named Rita. Their affair ends when Lolita contacts Humbert for money.

I don’t recall Humbert ever being attracted to “nymphets” after Lolita leaves him. He does visit the old Haze home in Ramsdale, and finds it occupied by a new nymphet. But the discovery is only an occasion for a reminisce about what would have happened to his life had he stayed with a different family in Ramsdale.

I think ephebophile is the more appropriate technical term, but I’m not an expert on the subject. Humbert is attracted to Lolita because she reminds him of a girl he was attracted to when he was young, with whom he’s remained obsessed throughout his life. He seems to be capable of stopping himself from acting on his impulses and pretending to have a normal sex life until he meets Lolita. So even if you want to say he’s not a pedophile/ephebophile because he decides he still loves Lolita, he did live several decades of his life with a fixation on adolescent girls.

As I recall, he didn’t really care for these woman.

Can the tags be fixed some way? There is no edit.

As I remember it the end is surprising because:

We find out Humbert really loved Lolita even though she is now an adult, because that his attraction was presented as a result of his condition.

Lolita was between 11 or 12 in the book. Humbert talks about the “fleeting moment” of development which I think is only the very beginnings of the possibility of puberty. So I think pedophile is the right term.

Right. It took his relationship with Lolita to break him out of the past. If Lolita had decided to run away with him he could have developed a relationship with her as an adult. A true pedophile would not do this.

As long as we’re nitpicking, the way I understand the terms are as follows: pedophlies > pre-pubescent children, ephebophiles > children on the cusp of puberty. That sounds like a better description of a 12-year-old.

I haven’t read the book in a long time, but wasn’t she more like 14? I seem to remember her having a some sexual experience with the son of the woman who ran the summer camp she went to the previous year. Anyway, Humbert states pretty clearly that he is obsessed with pubescent girls at the outset. The fact that he’s in love with her doersn’t change the original affliction.

Lolita is 12 when she first has sexual relations with Humbert.

I haven’t re-read it in a few years, but no, she’s 12 when it starts. I forget if those sexual experiences you mention happen before the book or during the first summer depicted in the book, when Humbert is married to Charlotte. I thought it was the latter.

Dolores Haze was born in January 1935, and her long road trip with Humbert lasts from August 1947 to August 1948.

Do you remember at what age she was involved with the kid at camp, Walloon?

As I understand it ephebophiles means post-puberty. It might be a distinction of Humbert’s condition that he wants a girl that is not totally a child but not in puberty yet. There probably is not a clear line between a pedophile and an ephebophile and Humbert is in the gray area.

My contention is that Humbert got locked into the pedophile mindframe but by the end he had no interest in nymphets and was no longer a pedophile and never reall was he just got locked into a weird place for a long time.

By the time of the road trip Humbert’s love of Lolita was already pulling him along. He would have stayed with her forever as opposed to Quilty on the other hand who was a true pedophile.

Technical terms aside: I think that makes him a [whatever]phile. You don’t just happen to lust after children for several decades because you’re in a “weird place.”

The difference you mention in your reply to Walloon is the difference between a sex criminal and a serial sex criminal. They’re both criminals, just of a slightly different type. The fact that Humbert stays fixated on the one girl doesn’t mean he’s really in love with her, and being ‘in love’ doesn’t mean he isn’t a pedophile or ephebophile. Lolita is just the outlet for his obsession.

I would say that Humbert had a psychological problem that was different from being a pedophile. I think he was led to being obsessed with things including nymphets like his lost first love. Had she been 21 he would have been obsessed with 21 year olds until he could work through that. The problem for Humbert was that it took so long to start a real relatioship with a young girl. Had he not died in prison I think he would he have been obsessed with recreating his relationship with Lolita.

But he still wants her as an adult. Compare this to Quilty. Humbert is just prone to obsession and re-creation. The fact he is obsessed with a child is an accident of circumstance.

I agree he is a criminal. But calling him a pedophile is just not right. He is soething else.

Lolita is at summer camp in 1947, when she is 12. Lolita later tells Humbert of her sexual experiences at Camp Q with a girl named Barbara and a boy named Charlie.

I’m not going to let you make me read the book again when I have too many other things I should read first. :wink: Why does Humbert want her as an adult? I think his remorse for wrecking her youth, if not her entire life, plays a big part. I know he calls it love, but I don’t know if it’s true. And when she turns him down, he goes to murder Quilty. Quilty didn’t steal the adult Lolita away from him, he took the 13-year-old.

Every obsession is triggered by some circumstance or other.

I have fixed the spoiler tag in the OP, though I hardly believe a spoiler should be necessary for a novel published over 50 years ago.

He is going to give her the oney because of the past. However, upon seeing her he realizes he loves her. The love is real and shocks Humbert.