The Importance of the Genital Stage Evocation
derive sexual pleasure or orgasm without the need to conduct a perfect act of copulation.
Humbert Humbert, however, regardless his vague awareness of his singularity, is convinced that he knows the cause of his troubled sexual
development is his affair with Annabel. I am convinced, however, that in a certain magic and fateful way Lolita began
with Annabel. I also know that the shock of Annabel’s death consolidated the frustration of that nightmare summer, made of it a permanent obstacle to any
further romance throughout the cold years of my youth. Nabokov, 1997:13- 14
After the event of Annabel’s death, Humbert Humbert faces difficulties in progressing his sexual development normally. This is the stage where Humbert
Humbert becomes fixated. The causes of fixation lies upon the fear of facing dangers such as insecurity, failure, and punishment Hall, 1954:94. Hall adds that
when a person feels insecure, heshe develops particular uneasiness that heshe is not capable of dealing with the demands of a new situation. Heshe fears that the
new situation will only bring more pain to himher. Thus, hisher development is halted, and heshe lingers on the stage where heshe is being fixated.
We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives. I was a strong lad and survived; but the poison was
in the wound, and the wound remained ever open, and soon I found myself maturing amid a civilization which allows a man of twenty-five to court a girl
of sixteen but not a girl of twelve. Nabokov, 1997:18
His affair with Annabel leaves him a permanent obstacle to follow a normal
sexual developmental course. Seto 2008:101-102 mentions that many people have early sexual experiences as children with other children. In addition, many of them
are able to continue their sexual development normally to have sexual experience with similar-
aged peers Seto, 2008:102. Humbert Humbert’s development, somehow, is blocked by the impression that Annabel had left. It is because
pedophiles usually are already predisposed towards this inclination for several causes such as childhood sexual abuse and poor parent-child attachment Seto,
2008:102. Furthermore, Humbert Humbert’s craving for girls who have childish
and immature physical features andor characteristics remains. Seto 2008:102 states that
Some individuals, for unspecified reasons, may pair the physical cues of young partners−such as small body size, androgynous body shape, absence
of pubic hair, and absence of secondary sexual characteristics−with the sexual pleasure elicited by these initial experiences and eventually learn to associate
these cues with the powerful reinforcement of orgasm
Humbert Humbert, moreover , has difficulties to repress Annabel’s
impression. He remains sexually driven towards sexually immature girls as his sexual object preference.
The anxiety wherein a person is afraid to leave the old and familiar for the new and unfamiliar is called
separation anxiety
Hall, 1954:94. Humbert Humbert has already formed a comfortable situation with Annabel to which he is afraid to
lose. In addition , in Humbert Humbert’s case, the separation anxiety he experiences
is greatly more intensified by the shock of Annabel’s death that he experiences. That is why, he keeps looking for the same sensation of comfort that he had lost
after Annabel’s death. But
that mimosa grove−the haze of the stars, the tingle, the flame, the honey- dew, and the ache remained with me, and that little girl with her seaside limbs
and ardent tongue haunted me ever since−until at last, a twenty-four years later, I broke her spell by incarnating her in another. Nabokov, 1997:15
Humbert Humbert, then, succeeds in bringing his infantile wish by incarnating the figure of Annabel in another person. It is actually the wish which is
built up out of the percept. Freud states that the percept is commonly related to the sexual wish. It evokes the sexual excitation out of the somatic need. Freud in
Stoodley, 1959:93 then adds that when the original object of wish is no longer present the recollection of the object and of the sexual that is associated with it
remains. Freud, then, adds that when the somatic excitation is reproduced again, or when the need reappears, the “impulse in the apparatus” will call back the memory
of the image and then to find the association of this image to obtain gratification.