Nymphet: Difference between revisions
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{{cquote| Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but [[nymph]]ic (that is, [[demon]]iac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as 'nymphets.' |
{{cquote| Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but [[nymph]]ic (that is, [[demon]]iac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as 'nymphets.' |
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It will be marked that I substitute time terms for spatial ones. In fact, I would have the reader see 'nine' and 'fourteen' as the boundaries—the mirrory beaches and rosy |
It will be marked that I substitute time terms for spatial ones. In fact, I would have the reader see 'nine' and 'fourteen' as the boundaries—the mirrory beaches and rosy rocks—of an enchanted island haunted by those nymphets of mine and surrounded by a vast, misty sea.<ref name=Nabokov />}} |
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For Humbert, a nymphet is in the earliest stages of [[puberty]]: "The bud-stage of breast development appears early (10.7 years)."<ref name=Nabokov /> When he meets a streetwalker who claims to be 18, he considers her no longer a nymphet, although her body is still in some ways childlike.<ref name=Nabokov /> |
For Humbert, a nymphet is in the earliest stages of [[puberty]]: "The bud-stage of breast development appears early (10.7 years)."<ref name=Nabokov /> When he meets a streetwalker who claims to be 18, he considers her no longer a nymphet, although her body is still in some ways childlike.<ref name=Nabokov /> |
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Revision as of 11:20, 14 August 2010
 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (November 2009) |
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The term nymphet was used by Vladimir Nabokov in the novel Lolita to describe the 9- to 14-year-old girls to whom the protagonist is attracted.[1]
Lolita
The archetypal nymphet is the character Dolores Haze of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita. Nabokov, in the voice of his narrator Humbert, first describes these nymphets in the following passage:
Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as 'nymphets.' It will be marked that I substitute time terms for spatial ones. In fact, I would have the reader see 'nine' and 'fourteen' as the boundaries—the mirrory beaches and rosy rocks—of an enchanted island haunted by those nymphets of mine and surrounded by a vast, misty sea.[1]
For Humbert, a nymphet is in the earliest stages of puberty: "The bud-stage of breast development appears early (10.7 years)."[1] When he meets a streetwalker who claims to be 18, he considers her no longer a nymphet, although her body is still in some ways childlike.[1]
Related terms
Faunlet
The term faunlet, also coined by Nabokov and used by Humbert Humbert, is used to describe the young male counterpart of a nymphet, in the same way that the mythological fauns were the counterpart of the nymphs. The term appears in the novel twice:
When I was a child and she was a child, my little Annabel was no nymphet to me; I was her equal, a faunlet in my own right, on that same enchanted island of time.[1]
...I met the unblinking dark eyes of two strange and beautiful children, faunlet and nymphet, whom their identical flat dark hair and bloodless cheeks proclaimed siblings if not twins.[1]
Nympholept
Nabokov used the word to describe one who could "discern" nymphets from other girls. In Humbert's own words:
A normal man given a group photograph of school girls or Girl Scouts and asked to point out the comeliest one will not necessarily choose the nymphet among them. You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!), in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs - the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limb, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate - the deadly little demon among the wholesome children.[1]
Earlier use
The first recorded use of the term 'nymphet', defined by The Century Dictionary as "a little nymph",[2] was by Drayton in Poly-Olbion I. xi. Argt. 171 (1612): "Of the nymphets sporting there In Wyrrall, and in Delamere."
See also
References
External links
- Constructions of Childhood in Art and Media: Sexualized Innocence, Alexandra Wood.
- "Little Deadly Demons: Nymphets, sexuality and a North American girl-child", Dawson, Kellie, American Sexuality Magazine.
- "Lola! Lola! Lola!", by Jascha Kessler in the California Literary Review, March 2007