The Morality of “Lolita”

Extract

The difference in critical response to Lolita in England and America is interesting and troubling. It cannot be dismissed without comment or merely accepted as a twentieth century phenomenon of intellectual life. It can, I believe, be explained in only one way. In the literature of the United States there is by now a well-established literary tradition which centres around the alien figure in society, the outcast, the lowly and the rejected.