Date Posted:09:58:08 01/08/08 Tue Author:Rachel Worden Subject: Humbert Humbert in Atonement
Humbert Humbert in ATONEMENT
(any advice on editing this note?)
Briony Tallis is the thirteen year old protagonist of Ian McEwen’s Atonement. Like any early-teen female in literature, Briony cannot avoid a comparison to another literary figure: Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. McEwan is certainly aware of this and has peppered his text with allusions to the famous nymphet.
Atonement has a character named Lola. Lola is the pet name that Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert gives Lolita specifically when wearing slacks. McEwan’s Lola is fifteen (just a year too old to be classified as a nymphet) and like Lolita she is raped by a man much her senior who happens to notice and comment on the girl’s slacks. Another allusion comes from Briony’s migraine burdened mother who shares one of Humbert Humbert’s talents. Humbert who likes to keep informed of the doings in Lolita’s home without leaving his study describes himself as a spider sending silken threads throughout the house in search of the young girl. Briony’s mother, Emily, while staving off a headache sends “tendrils” out from her bed to keep track of her household. Nabokov’s dismissal of psychology is well documented and Emily Tallis’ Freudianism is quite comical. The reader also learns in Lolita’s preface that all the characters involved are deceased, Atonement’s final pages inform the reader likewise. Lolita’s preface also redirects readers who want to know “the real people behind the true story." Atonement’s final pages subtly admonish the reader who wants to know “what really happened." The novels seem to share important dates: Atonement opens in 1935 the year of Lolita’s birth and Briony’s second draft is complete in 1947 the fatidic date of Humbert and Lolita’s first acquaintance. You can even find Lolita’s name hidden in Briony Tallis. Briony writes a play titled “The trials of Arabella” which seems a nod to Humbert's first love Annabell. But it is in Briony’s “ancient lust” of writing where the young girls diverge.
Rather than producing another Lolita, Ian McEwan seems to have reinvented Humbert Humbert as a thirteen year old girl. Like Humbert, Briony is the author of the text. Like Humbert, Briony is only aware of her inner world and is therefore oblivious and destructive to the life of those around her. Like Humbert, Briony becomes aware of the extent of her lie too late and she, like Humbert, can only hope to achieve atonement through writing. Humbert believes in fate to the point where he supposes his hotel room number to be “a key” and He excuses his behavior as destined. This is where the characters differ; Briony’s room number “told (her) nothing” and her pain of guilt is sincere. Whether either achieves atonement is for the reader jury to decide.
