During the last few chapters of the first part of Lolita, Humbert's voice and tone changes toward Lolita. He becomes less flowery and harsher, using meaning words. As I have said before, one things he now starts to do is blaming Lolita for everything he did to her. But, he says what he wanted wasn't sex with a nymphet, but something deeper, that only a nymphet could show him. Her beauty and charm seduce him to have sex with her, but he claims, which becomes part of his justification, that all he wanted was the magic of the nymphet.
"Pride alone prevented her from giving up; for, in my strange predicament, I feigned supreme stupidity and had her have her way--at least while I could still bear it. But really these are irrelevant matters; I am not concerned with so-called 'sex' at all. Anybody can imagine those elements of animality. A greater endeavor lures me on: to fix one for all the perilous magic of nymphets" (Lolita, 134). He now claims that his lover wanted him to pursue her, which he somewhat depict throughout his story. But, the reader has to keep in mind it's from his point of view, not hers. In Humbert's eyes, Lolita had full control over him. Everything he did was because of or for her. Except, he was hunting her for his sexual pleasures. He had to finally know the magic of being with a nymphet. If he could know what that was like, the mystery of everything would be over, and he would no longer need to pursue nymphets. In his mind, he thinks he and Lolita would be together forever and it wasn't because of the sex they would have, it was because of the attraction each had for each other.
Before their first sexual encounter, Humbert says something rather strange. "It would never do, would it, to have you fellows fall madly in love with my Lolita!" (Lolita, 134). This statement goes back to the idea that Lolita is his and he is now jealous of everyone. But, he is also saying he will save everyone reading the book from falling under he spell. Humbert is suggesting that Lolita is such a potent person, that even reading about her in a certain way would make the reader fall in love with her. This is an interesting strategy, considering the meaner and harsher language he starts to use while describing their further adventures.
Once again, the unwritten psychoanalyst character seems to pop up. While Humbert's describing all that happens from the time Charlotte dies to the end of the book, this unwritten character seems to be looming. Most of the story feels as if Humbert is trying to write is story to a psychoanalyst, rather than a jury, which could, and probably is, the game that Nabokov wants the reader to play. It's the character he hates, but always seems to bring back. The reader can at some points feel sorry for Humbert or pity him, at the very least. A human characteristic that can change the way a person views another. But, it seems it would be hard to completely get rid of this character, otherwise, the reader wouldn't be able to understand Humbert completely, especially while the two are having intercourse.
"More and more uncomfortable did Humbert feel. It was something quite special, that feeling: an oppressive hideous constraint as if I were sitting with the small ghost of someone I had just killed" (Lolita, 140). It seems strange Humber would use such language of himself. He constantly talks about the need to maintain Lolita's purity by sleeping with her in the dark of night so she wouldn't know, but they'd just had sex together multiple times and both parties were wide awake. Even though he tried to maintain her innocence, he didn't and he felt guilty for it. However, this wasn't going to make him stop. He was still under the nymphet spell and nothing, he thought, could break it.
You could certainly pursue the "psychoanalyst" voice as a repeating mode in the book. This post is particularly interesting: you know, another defense of Lolita's innocence is that she is not innocent in the physical sense (i.e. a virgin); and yet Humbert says that virginity is "disproven by modern science"; and, later, he says that the rather rustic Charlie was the rapist, not he. As for "blaming Lolita," there are a variety of ways: she seduced him; nymphets exert a magical power; she is a hunter, not him; since he is a poet, she is his subject (and the poet is inspired by the subject, not the other way around)... So, his self-psychoanalysis is relatively confident in the beginning, but grows more strident and less plausible up to the Enchanted Hunters sequence. Increasingly, unless I'm wrong, Humbert sees himself as a victim of his condition.
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