But the way Hale writes the scene almost succeeds in completely neutering these two sources of outrage. The reason it should have been appalling is twofold-it is a “sort-of” rape, as Bruno admits (Lydia is asleep) and it is an act of bestiality. (If you can think of others, please post below.) The scene that should have been the most appalling in the book is the night that Bruno loses his virginity. And John Collier’s “His Monkey Wife” took a more satirical look at the love between man and ape. William Tester’s “Darling” described with delicacy and lyricism the relations between a young man and a cow. Yet there is a tradition of fiction about physical love between humans and animals. No doubt this desire to discomfit also factored into Hale’s decision to give lengthy descriptions of sex between Bruno and Lydia. See Arundhati Roy’s “The God of Small Things.”) (Incest has been used for that purpose in our time, I think. Ackerley may have chosen the love of a dog-like Humbert Humbert’s emotion, a true passion-for the same reason, to confront his readers with the image of a wild love, a crazy love, something that could make them truly uncomfortable. In a 1958 essay on “Lolita,” Lionel Trilling argued that Nabokov chose a subject as shocking as pedophilia for want of any more potent image of forbidden love.
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