"... to the thought that with patience and luck I might have her produce eventually a nymphet with my blood in her exquisite veins, a Lolita the Second, who would be eight or nine around 1960, when I would still be dans le force de l'âge, [...] practicing on supremely lovely Lolita the Third the art of being a granddad." (174)
After their travel in the West of the country, HH decided to settle in Beardsley where Lolita could go to school and enjoy a more "normal" youth, and where HH could learn more about the possibility of guardianship over Lolita. But HH, as he writes his story, regrets his decision of going to Beardsley: he now thinks that they should have gone abroad where he could have lived his perverted life with Lolita.
I think that this passage reaches a new level in the reader's understanding of HH's depravity. Indeed, this passage shows that HH does not love Lolita as a person: he loves the idea of Lolita, the image he has of this 12/13 year old nymphet. At this point, he believes that he won't love her forever, that as soon as she stops being a nymphet, he won't care about her. His perverse plan is therefore to use Lolita, to get her pregnant, and to relive his "love" story with the daughter, and later, with the grand daughter. By calling them "Lolita the Second" and "Lolita the Third", we understand that HH does not see Lolita as a unique person: his aim is to "produce" other girls that would correspond to the concept of a Lolita that HH has in mind, in order to live his passion indefinitely. His plan would be to replace one Lolita by another as soon as the girl gets too old: he sees her as an object rather than as a person and, as such, he thinks that he has total control over her... Would Lolita have accepted this life or would she have been strong enough to escape on her own?
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