Subject
Hazel's unattractiveness; deaths in VN
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Dear List,
I'd like to add my own contribution to the matter of Hazel's
unattractiveness. Last December, I defended my PhD on Nabokov. It dealt
with
girl-figures in his fiction, and I studied in detail the
characterization of
this particular character who stands out when compared to the other (and
very numerous) maidens in Nabokov's fiction. Hazel indeed does not have
the
ambiguous characteristics of Ada or Lolita (and many others), between
innocence and seduction.
What makes Hazel a unique girl in Nabokov's work is precisely her
unattractiveness. Unlike Lolita, Ada or Lucette, she did not inherit her
mother's beauty: Sybil was indeed a beautiful maiden, as mentioned lines
247-248.
In addition, Hazel's unattractiveness is strongly emphasized in the
novel
by the obvious contrast built between herself and Marilyn Monroe, who
appears on the screen of the Shades' TV set as Hazel gets off the bus to
go
and kill herself. Marilyn Monroe embodies the beauty canons of the time
when
the novel was written, and instead of imagining the thoughts of a
fictional
character created by Nabokov, I would rather see the suicide of Hazel as
an
implicit criticism of a society so obsessed by appearances and exterior
beauty that a young girl feels compelled to kill herself.
Another key-feature of Shade's poem is the way Hazel's death is
conveyed
from a poetic point of view:
A blurry shape stepped off the reedy bank
Into a crackling, gulping swamp, and sank.
The moment of her suicide precisely occurs between line 499 and line
500,
at the very (empty) center of the 999-line poem. The run on line that
links
these two crucial lines aptly figures the sliding movement from bank to
water, a tragic move reinforced by the rhyming "bank" and "sank". Hence
Hazel's death is placed in the blank between two lines, a blank that is
the
center of the poem and thus reveals that her death, and death in general
can
be viewed as the main topic of the poem, introduced from the first lines
by
the waxwing slain on the window pane. Another possible interpretation
would
be that the typographical blank representing Hazel's death echoes the
unspoken guilt of the Shades.
Marie Bouchet
University of Toulouse, France
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
I'd like to add my own contribution to the matter of Hazel's
unattractiveness. Last December, I defended my PhD on Nabokov. It dealt
with
girl-figures in his fiction, and I studied in detail the
characterization of
this particular character who stands out when compared to the other (and
very numerous) maidens in Nabokov's fiction. Hazel indeed does not have
the
ambiguous characteristics of Ada or Lolita (and many others), between
innocence and seduction.
What makes Hazel a unique girl in Nabokov's work is precisely her
unattractiveness. Unlike Lolita, Ada or Lucette, she did not inherit her
mother's beauty: Sybil was indeed a beautiful maiden, as mentioned lines
247-248.
In addition, Hazel's unattractiveness is strongly emphasized in the
novel
by the obvious contrast built between herself and Marilyn Monroe, who
appears on the screen of the Shades' TV set as Hazel gets off the bus to
go
and kill herself. Marilyn Monroe embodies the beauty canons of the time
when
the novel was written, and instead of imagining the thoughts of a
fictional
character created by Nabokov, I would rather see the suicide of Hazel as
an
implicit criticism of a society so obsessed by appearances and exterior
beauty that a young girl feels compelled to kill herself.
Another key-feature of Shade's poem is the way Hazel's death is
conveyed
from a poetic point of view:
A blurry shape stepped off the reedy bank
Into a crackling, gulping swamp, and sank.
The moment of her suicide precisely occurs between line 499 and line
500,
at the very (empty) center of the 999-line poem. The run on line that
links
these two crucial lines aptly figures the sliding movement from bank to
water, a tragic move reinforced by the rhyming "bank" and "sank". Hence
Hazel's death is placed in the blank between two lines, a blank that is
the
center of the poem and thus reveals that her death, and death in general
can
be viewed as the main topic of the poem, introduced from the first lines
by
the waxwing slain on the window pane. Another possible interpretation
would
be that the typographical blank representing Hazel's death echoes the
unspoken guilt of the Shades.
Marie Bouchet
University of Toulouse, France
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm