Dolores

Lolita Haze is the tantalizing twelve-year-old girl in Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial 1955 novel, Lolita, which was made into an equally controversial movie in 1962, starring Sue Lyon as the nimble nymphet. Lolita is the object of obsession of Humbert Humbert, the middle-aged, professorial narrator of the novel, who marries the mother in order to be near the daughter. Poor Lolita – she has no voice of her own, the narrative being commandeered by Humbert. It is through his interpretation that she is presented to us, and so we see her as a conniving, opportunistic woman-child who initiates the sexual relationship between them. Orphaned by her widowed mother’s accidental death, Lolita becomes the “property” of Humbert, who leads her on a cross-country, nomadic journey while posing as her father. Ultimately, Lolita escapes his clutches and after a brief liaison with Humbert’s nemesis, Claire Quilty, goes on to marry a young man her own age. The wages of sin follow her, and Lolita dies in childbirth. She is still a child herself.

Dolores Claiborne is the eponymous heroine of Stephen King’s 1992 best-selling novel, Dolores Claiborne, which was also made into a successful 1995 movie with Kathy Bates in the title role. The novel takes a narrative form, with Dolores providing the police with her story, defending herself against the crime of murdering her employer, the bitchy Vera Donovan, but also implicating herself in the murder of her husband, the horrid and abusive Joe, who molested their only daughter when she was 14 years old. Dolores is a hardscrabble, no-nonsense character, who grimly does what has to be done in the name of salvation for the child she loves, and her own destiny be damned. She is someone you’d definitely want to have on your side!