EXECUTING SENTENCES IN LOLITA

• Date: 09 December 2003
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(03)30008-0
• Pages: 185-209
• Published date: 09 December 2003
• Author: Susan Elizabeth Sweeney

EXECUTING SENTENCES IN LOLITA

AND THE LAW

Susan Elizabeth Sweeney

“Let the jury consider their verdict,” the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.

“No, no!” said the Queen “Sentence first – verdict afterwards.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” said Alice loudly. “The idea of havingthe sentence first!” (...)

“Off with her head!” the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1866–1960, pp. 160–61)

SENTENCE FIRST

A “sentence,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is a pronouncement

of opinion, a pithy statement, an authoritative decision, or an idea expressed in

a grammatically complete, self-contained utterance. Notice that these definitions

all emphasize thought rather than action. Of course, sentences – such as “Let

there be light,” “Keep off the grass,” “You shall be hanged by the neck until

dead,” and “Notice that these definitions all emphasize thought rather than action”

– may command or recommend an act. Some philosophers even maintain that

“certain classes of utterances, in certain situations ...bring about, rather than

refer to, a new state of fact” (Hollander, 1996, p. 178). J. L. Austin, whose

book How to Do Things with Words established the field of speech-act theory,

argues that “performative” statements can have the effect of actions (1962).1

And yet the words in a sentence – whether it is an ordinary linguistic unit or

the judgment in a criminal case – are still distinguishable from the deed they

Punishment, Politics, and Culture

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society,Volume 30, 185–209

Copyright © 2004 by Elsevier Ltd.

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved

ISSN: 1059-4337/doi:10.1016/S1059-4337(03)30008-0

185

186 SUSAN ELIZABETH SWEENEY

describe. The differences between pronouncing and executing sentences even

led Justice Antonin Scalia to assert, in Wilson v. Seiter, that restrictions against

“cruel and unusual punishment” should apply only to pain “formally meted out

as punishment by the statute or the sentencing judge,” or meant to be cruel and

unusual by the inflicting officer (1991, p. 2325). He is assuming, of course, a legal

system that “guarantees – or is supposed to – a relatively faithful adherence to

the word of the judge in the deeds carried out against the prisoner” (Cover, 1992,

p. 225).2As Scalia’s remarks demonstrate, however, the distinction between a

sentence’s pronouncement, on the one hand, and its execution, on the other,raises

disturbing questions about intention, interpretation, agency, and responsibility.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY

Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita offers a provocative case study in which to

explore such questions (1955–1989b). Unlike “execution novels” based on actual

cases (Guest, 1997, p. 8) – such as Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, Wright’s

Native Son, Capote’s In Cold Blood, or Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song –Lolita

takes the form of a fantastic memoir that a man charged with murder writes

for his attorney.3The narrator, Humbert Humbert, stages his confession as a

grandiose rehearsal of his upcoming trial, while depicting courtroom procedures

with the same absurdity as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s Alice’s Adventures

in Wonderland.4Humbert’s text not only anticipates and attempts to control

the proceedings, but actually replaces them: he dies soon after completing his

confession but before his case can be heard. He is never tried in a court of

law, leaving the novel’s readers – the sole witnesses to his confession, apart

from a fictitious lawyer and editor – stuck with the tasks of both judge and

jury.

Nabokov designed his novel, in other words, so that readers feel compelled to

resolve its convoluted narrative structure by finding a verdict and pronouncing

sentence on the narrator.5Lolita thus exemplifies the kind of tautological,

circularly constructed, morally ambiguous narrative – whether legal or literary –

described in Peter Brooks’s Troubling Confessions. Brooks explains that

confessions activate inextricablelayers of shame, guilt, contempt, self-loathing, attempted pro-

pitiation, and expiation. Unless the contents of the confession can be verified by other means,

thus substantiating its trustworthiness, it may be false – false to fact, if true to some other sense

of guilt (2000,p.6).

As a performative declaration, the sentence “I confess” seems to demand

forgiveness but may lead to other profound, even irreversible consequences