Lolita: what happens when lust wins from reason. A link between Kavanaugh, sexual abuse and a 1955 novel.

What happens between the sheets and what not, how you seduce and make love and how not - the limits of sexual morality are currently in a constant state of change, as shown yet again by the controversy surrounding the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh, candidate for the American Supreme Court.

How do we denounce the accusations against Kavanaugh of sexual abuse? Perhaps the question is also: what do we do if desire takes over reason, as was probably the case in the incident between Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, the academic accusing him of sexual abuse? Or was it the other way around: did Kavanaugh use his brain when he (if he did) tried to rape Blasey Ford?

For answers we can turn to someone who has also committed sexual transgressive behavior: the fictional figure Humbert Humbert. Humbert's solution is at first as simple as it is shocking: the nymph does not want, cannot, it is not allowed, so you do it without her realizing it, if necessary by drugging her.

Lolita (1955), the novel by Vladimir Nabokov is startling because of the theme of pedophilia, but the story goes much deeper than that: Nabokov forces us to face the facts about the greed driven man.

Kavanaugh was, at the time of his alleged crime, in the first place a young man captured by his desire. A young man of seventeen, late at night during a party, a young man with a lot of beers. Do you remember? Does this look familiar? No? Well, just think about it...

Yes? Indeed, people have physical desires, especially when the liquor flows, and then they have sex, as good and as bad as it goes. We cannot make more of it - that is the sad state of affairs. The most important question is how that happens. Where are the limits of what is acceptable? And: are we prisoners of our physical drives? And: what about our intellect?

Blasey Ford testified about what happened in the house where she and Kavanaugh were present as high school students. Both on a bed, the blind drunk Kavanaugh on top of her, he tried to undress her, ‘I was afraid that he would rape me’, she resisted, he put his hand on her mouth, during the struggle they fell from the bed.

When President Trump said of Kavanaugh, "He is a fine man with a great intellect," you can immediately think of Humbert. That sounds crazy, but even Humbert's intellect was not as 'big' (read: decisive) as he thought. Humbert: a 37-year-old literature professor who travels from Europe to America, where he fell in love with Dolores Haze in a town in New England - who is twelve years old.

That is of course not possible. But to get his way, Humbert thinks up all kinds of tricks. Nabokov places the reader in an impossible situation: on the one hand everything from within wants to shout that something like that is not allowed, on the other hand we can have nothing but sympathy with Humbert. After all, he is the narrator, and in his story we discover a humanity that we recognize. It is, that much is clear, an impossible story.

Humbert wants to do everything possible to keep her honor intact while he allowes his desire free reign. He planned the abuse of Dolores to the letter - he uses his brain - but in this he is the slave of his desire. After the famous scene in which 'Lo' is on his lap, he is in a state of irrepressible excitement (he has lost all control, no brain cell comes into action here), it came as a great relief when he realizes that the ‘sex’ had gone unnoticed.

You could say, well Humbert, at least you have empathy, you see Dolores as a human being. But that's a smoke screen. Humbert only wants to protect her 'honor', so that he can continue to abuse her. Later he even tries to drug her. He is willing to go this far to get what he wants.

Humbert has an inability or unwillingness to really see Lolita, to be curious about her as a human being, to look at her fears and desires. That makes Humbert a 'monster or incuriosity' that empowers him to abuse her.

This leads us to a wonderful irony: if Humbert could really see her, if he had used his brain, he would not have had any interest in her anymore. Because his ‘Lo’ is not his ‘Lo’; in reality she is only a dream image, a mental reincarnation of the 'nymph' that he has been dreaming about since his teenage years. Humbert: 'She has no life of her own, in other words, she was a dream.'

'Lolita' does not exist. She is nothing more than a pornographic fantasy, an actor in the bad movie shot in the lower regions of his mind, where the erotic fantasies take shape that drive physical desire. As an extension of this you can say: the selfishness of Humbert - he must and will possess her - is a result of his desire.

We also see this in the conversation about Kavanaugh and Blasey Ford. She is simply not seen, still not, even after her testimony before a commission of the Senate. It's only about the men: about Kavanaugh and Trump, who could not resist to make Blasey Ford ridiculous in a public speech, this in a most appalling way.

Whatever happens to Kavanaugh, his story and that of Blasey Ford indicate how the boundaries of sexual morality have entered a state of constant change.

What happened to Blasey Ford at the time, of course, is totally unacceptable. It was an attempted rape. But apparently their wrestling on the bed was not seen as such. The drunken Kavanaugh thought: that’s part of it. A little rubbing, jiggling, laughing. And Blasey Ford? She feared for her life, but she did not file a report. Did she also think, "that’s part of it?” Or more likely: she was just too scared to say something.

Meanwhile, it is clear, at least for those who think soberly, that it is certainly not a part of it. Lolita is written in the form of a confession. A crime has been committed, even with premeditation. Yet there are mitigating circumstances that make the novel so terrifying, so confrontational. His humanity lies at the root of the tragedy of Humber's life. That is recognizable: the failure of man when desire takes possession of the body. Thinking is sidelined.

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