I wish someone would notice the tender description of [Lolita’s] helplessness, her pathetic dependence on the monstrous Humbert Humbert , and her heartrending courage all along, culminating in that squalid but essentially pure and healthy marriage, and her letter, and her dog. And that terrible expression on her face when she had been cheated by Humbert Humbert out of some little pleasure that had been promised. They all miss the fact that ‘the horrid little brat’ Lolita is essentially very good indeed—or she would not have straightened out after being crushed so terribly, and found a decent life with poor Dick more to her liking than the other kind.
By Vera Nabokov
