If someone asked the average American, "What genre was Vladimir Nabokov's best-selling novel, Lolita?", what would he say? What would be their justification? Although Lolita includes drugs, pedophilia, incest, and murder, many Americans would say the novel would be classified as romantic. Among all the suitable genres such as drama, denunciation or even parody, Americans tend to break out of these molds and say that Lolita is a romantic novel or a love story. That aside, why would Americans come to this conclusion? Do they simply distance themselves from what people tell them about the novel, or is there an underlying reason? It is entirely possible that Americans romanticize Lolita and ignore her kidnapping and rape because Americans tend to blame rape victims and sympathize with their rapists. “Lolita. Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul." (Nabokov 9). Lolita is a story written in the 1950s by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov in which the narrator, Humbert Humbert, falls in love with a 12-year-old girl. The story begins with a murder confession and continues until Humbert moves into Charlotte Haze's house for the first time. He immediately falls in love with his twelve-year-old daughter Dolores. Later, Charlotte decides to send Lolita to a summer camp. After he leaves to take Dolores to camp, Humbert discovers that Charlotte has left him a letter. In this letter Charlotte confesses that she is madly in love with Humbert and proposes that he marry her or move away. Fearing separation from Lolita, he agrees to marry Charlotte. One day, Charlotte snoops in Humbert's diary and discovers that Humbert is in love with her daughter. Angry at herself for falling in love with such a despicable man,...... middle of paper......and just skipping them. Perhaps Humbert's partial narratives have misled readers, but when topics like drugs and murder come up it's pretty hard to stay confused about what's implied. It is possible that the romanticization of the novel may also result from not reading the book, but due to recent events such as the James Franco scandal and the Steubenville rape case Americans are more likely to sympathize with rapists. Americans even tend to blame the rape victim, as they did in the Steubenville rape case. If this is the case with Lolita, people would say that Dolores Haze willingly seduced Humbert Humbert, as Lana Del Rey seems to think. The way Americans have classified this novel demonstrates that American society ignores the inappropriate and often harmful ways in which men treat women and often ignores what the woman has to say on the subject..