Whether 'Lolita' is perversion or a masterpiece of world literature remains an uncomfortable issue.
Vladimir Nabokov
's novel
has been as acclaimed as 'Last Tango in Paris', Bernardo Bertolucci's film, and so many other pieces from the artistic world in which rape, mistreatment or pederasty are exposed.
Are we condescending when depravity is written in golden letters?
The Catalan writer Laura Freixas has gotten used to the dust left by her reflections and returns to them in her latest book, 'What do we do with Lolita?', Subtitled
'Arguments and battles around women and culture '.
A few hours before his official presentation in Madrid, he shares his thoughts with Yo Dona and explains the reasons that have led him to describe those
stereotypes
that are implanted in the universal imagination through some of the indisputable classics of the 20th century.
The perverse teenager is one of them, but far from the only one.
His claim, according to her, is not a cancellation campaign, but
a critical sense.
literature and women
Freixas discovered the root of all this just after arriving in Madrid, in 1991, ready to dedicate herself to literature and completely oblivious to the possibility that her status as a woman mattered in writing.
"The first thing I saw," he details, "was a meeting on the European novel whose 20 participants were from different countries, languages, generations... but only one sex. Then I realized it for the first time (later I would see the same thing repeated by everywhere) that it was
much more difficult to be recognized as a writer than as a writer".
Three years later she became a mother and looked for novels that spoke of motherhood.
"I didn't find any," she says, "and I began to realize (later I would see many other examples) that
female experiences were not,
or barely, represented in the literature."
So she wondered why this happens and what effects it has.
She still wonders if it's true that things are changing.
"These are the questions that I have been asking myself for many years and the texts of this book arise from them," she adds.
Why 'Lolita'?
"I took this novel," he clarifies, "as an example of something that should concern us: the influence of fiction, of culture in general, on reality. That a story of
kidnapping, rape and pedophilia
such as 'Lolita' has been qualified over and over again of great love story is something that naturalizes and reinforces the tolerance towards rapists and the disinterest towards the victims that we continue to suffer. And as much as we recognize Nabokov's literary quality, we have to point out and denounce his social influence" .
The story of 'Lolita' is terrifying, but no one doubts that he is a literary genius, a magnificent writer, a virtuoso of the word whose narrative has managed to embellish and pretext something as
abominable
as pedophile rape.
personal and professional
Can the human dimension and literary stature be separated?
It is not the first time that Freixas ponders about it.
He is concerned about the myth and that culture capable of legitimizing, excusing and
beautifying violence against women as a form of love and beauty.
The way of presenting the novel hurts him, as a sad and tender love story, because he ends up building a collective unconscious.
Neither the excuse of genius nor artistic quality seems to him sufficient to refrain from criticizing it.
"Let us remember," he writes in his book, "that Lolita clearly does not want to have sexual relations with that man who is four times her age and who has been her mother's husband. Let us remember that he has her in his power (he is her legal guardian). ), watches over her, prevents her from asking for help, and subjects her to physical violence.
Let's remember that Lolita cries bitterly every night after he rapes her. Love?"
In his opinion, the world is full of Humberts (its protagonist) and Lolitas: "Of mistreated and raped girls and women. That this concerns only 1.8% of Spaniards has something to do with a culture, of which 'Lolita' is just one example, which
trivializes that violence.
My conclusion will be understood: read it, yes, because it is a great novel. But also analyze it. Criticize it."
unequal culture
'What do we do with Lolita?'
it goes beyond her and Freixas denounces in her a cultural landscape in which the female figure is absent.
She feels it in the
inequality in education, in the lack of female references
or in the custom of confining women in a preserve of lovers, muses and other accessories for men.
He presents data, collects testimonies and exposes his own experience.
She is concerned, for example, about that discontinuity that she observes between women who create and those who obtain recognition.
"If women are so interested, even more than men, in literature, cinema or art, how is it that they so rarely reach
positions of authority and authorship?"
In her pages she insists that in the culture there is a prejudice against women and a misogynist discourse.
She also talks
about why men don't read women
and how female creation is excluded.
He analyzes why they are led to believe that they do not write well or what explains their limited participation in cultural life.
Think not only in a quantitative sense, but qualitatively.
Above all, he is interested in the consequences of sacralizing that culture and its protagonists.
One of the questions that most exasperates her is if she writes for women.
When she listens to her, she says that a thousand answers come to mind.
Pedantic, warlike, patient or highly original.
However, she closes her eyes, takes a deep breath and counts to one hundred.
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