If someone asked the average American: "What genre was Vladimir Nabokov's best-selling novel Lolita?" ", what would he answer? 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 appropriate genres such as drama, exposition, or even parody, Americans tend to think outside the box and claim that Lolita is a romantic novel or love story. Beyond that, why would Americans jump to this conclusion? Are they simply deviating from what people tell them about the novel, or is there an underlying reason? It's entirely possible that Americans idealize Lolita and ignore her kidnapping and rape because they 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 in for the first time. Charlotte Haze's house. He immediately falls in love with his twelve-year-old daughter Dolores. Later, Charlotte chooses to send Lolita to summer camp. After leaving to take Dolores to camp, Humbert discovers that Charlotte has left him a letter. In this letter, Charlotte admits that she is madly in love with Humbert and she offers to marry him or move away. Fearing being separated from Lolita, he agrees to marry Charlotte. One day, Charlotte looks through Humbert's diary and discovers that Humbert is in love with his daughter. Angry at herself for falling in love with such a despicable man,...... middle of paper ......e for simply skipping them. Perhaps Humbert's biased narratives misled readers, but when topics like drugs and murder come up, it's pretty hard to be mistaken about what's being implied. It is possible that the romanticization of the novel stems from not even having read the book, but due to recent events such as the James Franco scandal and the Steubenville rape case, it is more likely that Americans sympathize with rapists. Americans even tend to blame the rape victim, as they did in the Steuben Ville rape case. If this is the case with Lolita, one could argue that Dolores Haze intentionally seduced Humbert Humbert as Lana Del Rey seems to think. The way Americans rated this novel proves that American society ignores the inappropriate and often harmful ways men treat women and often ignores what the woman has to say about it..