Since I haven’t quite had the head to put into Barthes’ S/Z, I only have scanned the codes he outlines but in reading Nabokov’s Lolita, I’m wondering if these little things I’m picking out are part of the readerly theory.
I was already lying upon my cold bed both hands pressing to my face Lolita’s fragrant ghost when I heard my indefatigable landlady creeping stealthily up to my door to whisper through it–(…)
Has she already been initiated by mother nature to the Mystery of the Menarche? (…) "Mr. Uterus (I quote from a girls’ magazine) starts to build a thick soft wall on the chance that a possible baby may have to be bedded down there." The tiny madman in his padded cell. (p. 47)
I see either a fantasy figure of the baby, or Humbert in the prison of his room while "life" lies outside of it, in Lolita.
This one’s a bit too obvious, from a dream of Humbert’s:
Sometimes I attempt to kill in my dreams. But do you know what happens? For instance I hold a gun. For instance I aim at a bland, quietly interested enemy. Oh, I press the trigger all right, but one bullet after another feebly drops on the floor from the sheepish muzzle. (p. 47)
This is a bit more questionable:
Lo came in and after pottering around, became interested in the nightmare curlicues I had penned on a sheet of paper. Oh no: they were not the outcome of a bellelettrist’s inspired pause between two paragraphs; they were the hideous hieroglyphics (which she could not decipher) of my fatal lust. (p. 48)
Humbert keeps a diary of his days with Lolita and of his desire for her. His use of "hieroglyphics" may go beyond the physical cramped writing he uses, perhaps hinting of ancient secrets and likening that to his own.
Her adorable profile, parted lips, arm hair were some three inches from my bared eyetooth and I felt the heat of her limbs through her rough tomboy clothes. (p. 48)
"Bared eyetooth" indicates the hunger of a predatory animal. There could be little mistaking this reference.
And how does Nabokov’s prose manipulate the reader? There is a romance to the language, it is certainly not crude and yet the subject most certainly is. Would we be more offended if the descriptions included more vulgar terms–we’re certainly used to them, although America of 1955 was not. Does the language hide the vulgarity, the devil–which Humbert, in the use of "nymphet" alludes to as those certain young girls that have this power over him–being cloaked in the innocent "rough tomboy clothes" of his prey?
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology