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Jim Twiggs has once again raised a thorny question regarding Shade's
personality and relative goodness. I would like to suggest a thought
experiment. We are often told that in order to understand Lolita, we
have to look at the novel through the eyes of Dolores Haze (insomuch as
that is possible). We have to fight through Humbert's filter in order
to find the real girl. But what would happen to Pale Fire if we were to
see it through Hazel's eyes? Would we discover that she has been hidden
from our view by her father's art? Would we find that a much more
interesting, complex woman has been replaced by an ugly, difficult,
morose caricature, whose death is passed off as a pitiful mixture of
mental illness and dashed amatory prospects? Or do we accept Shade's
picture of Hazel as basically correct and leave it at that?
If Hazel were the novel's protagonist, I think it is safe to say that
her suicide would need to be motivated by something more than what
we're given. We need only look at the literature of female suicide to
see that women don't kill themselves without tragic purpose. That's not
true in life, but it's true in books. I believe VN has given us enough
subtle information to begin to put together a picture of Hazel that
does not always match the picture painted by Shade. Shade is a pitiful
figure in his own right. He is not up to the task of being a parent,
but he has had no role model in that regard, other than his bizarre
Aunt Maud--whose example may have provided Shade with a disturbing
version of the parent-child bond.
It would be good to examine the poltergeist scene more closely,
especially in tandem with the variant that begins Kinbote's next
note--which clearly reflects the narrative in the poltergeist note. I
don't believe that there were real poltergeists afoot, but I'm also not
convinced that there were, even by fakery, any zooming doggie baskets
or flying plates. That's what Shade told Jane Provost, but perhaps
Shade's embarrassment concerning something else caused him to concoct
this story. Anyway, plenty to chew on.
Matt Roth
P.S. Alexey will appreciate the fact that anagrammized Maud Shade =
Duma Hades. Duma (or Dumah) means "dumbness" or "silence" in Aramaic
(think of Maud after her stroke). He is a popular Yiddish folklore
figure, often characterized as the Angel of Death. In the Babylonian
story of the Descent of Ishtar into Hades, Duma is the guardian of the
14th gate.