“I insist upon proving that I am not, and never was, and never could have been, a brutal scoundrel. The gentle and dreamy regions through which I crept were the patrimonies of poets-not crime’s prowling ground. Had I reached my goal, my ecstasy would have been all softness, a case of internal combustion of which she would have hardly felt the heat, even if she were wide awake. But I still hoped she might gradually be engulfed in completeness of stupor that would allow me to taste more than a glimmer of her.” (131)
These lines show his desperate attempt at obtaining sympathy from his audience. He describes this inexcusable scenario to make it appear as if his advances were with good intentions. His self-delusion only succeeds in enforcing his unconvincing case. As a reader I still cannot sympathize with his argument. What he proposes as physically harmless may mentally be more troublesome when the child has matured and can look back at the experience with a better perspective. If his intentions were truly rooted in love and not lust one would think that he would wish for her complete awareness and consent.
The last line of this paragraph makes me question if he is not only using the sleeping pills to knock her out, but because this is the only way he could actually control her. She seems to hold power over him and he now can be the dominant force when she is drugged.
Q: Do you think that secretly Humbert wishes he could be this “brutal scoundrel” that would not have to drug his victims to exert his dominance?
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