Nabokov's Women

The Silent Sisterhood of Textual Nomads

Edited by Elena Rakhimova-Sommers - Contributions by Elena Sommers; Sofia Ahlberg; Marie Bouchet; Julian W. Connolly; David Larmour; David Rampton; Matthew Roth; Susan Elizabeth Sweeney; Lara Delage-Toriel; Olga Voronina and Alisa Zhulina

Nabokov’s Women: The Silent Sisterhood of Textual Nomads is the first book-length study to focus on Nabokov’s relationship with his heroines. Essays by distinguished Nabokov scholars explore the multilayered and nomadic nature of Nabokov’s women: their voice and voicelessness, their absentness, the paradigm of power and sacrifice within which they are situated, the paradox of their unattainability, their complex relationship with textual borders, the travel narrative, with the author himself.
By design, Nabokov’s woman is often assigned a short-term tourist visa with a firm expiration date. Her departure is facilitated by death or involuntary absence, which watermarks her into the male protagonist’s narrative, granting him an artistic release or a gift of self-understanding. When she leaves the stage, her portrait remains ambiguous. She can be powerfully enigmatic, but not self-actualized enough to be dynamic or, for even where the terms of her existence are deeply considered or her image beheld reverently, her recognition seems to be limited to the “Works Cited” register of the male narrator’s personal life. As a result, Nabokov’s texts often feature a nomadic woman who seems to live without a narratorial homeland, papers of her own, or storytelling privileges.
This volume explores the “residency status” of Nabokov’s silent nomads—his fleeting lovers, witches, muses, mermaids, and nymphets. As Nabokov scholars analyze the power dynamic of the writer’s narrative of male desire, they ponder—are these female characters directionless wanderers or covert operatives in the terrain of Nabokov’s text? Whereas each essay addresses a different aspect of Nabokov’s artistic relationship with the feminine, together they explore the politics of representation, authorization, and voicelessness. This collection offers new ways of reading and teaching Nabokov and is poised to appeal to a wide range of student and scholarly audiences.

Chapter 4, "Nabokov's Mermaid: 'Spring in Fialta'" by Elena Rakhimova-Sommers, is not available in the ebook format due to digital rights restrictions. You can find the earlier version of the chapter in the journal Nabokov Studies.

Lexington Books

Pages: 274 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-4985-0330-3 • Hardback • September 2017 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4985-0332-7 • Paperback • May 2019 • $50.99 • (£39.00)

978-1-4985-0331-0 • eBook • October 2017 • $48.00 • (£37.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Women, Literary Criticism / Russian & Former Soviet Union, Literary Criticism / Feminist

Nabokov's Women

The Silent Sisterhood of Textual Nomads

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Nabokov’s Women: The Silent Sisterhood of Textual Nomads is the first book-length study to focus on Nabokov’s relationship with his heroines. Essays by distinguished Nabokov scholars explore the multilayered and nomadic nature of Nabokov’s women: their voice and voicelessness, their absentness, the paradigm of power and sacrifice within which they are situated, the paradox of their unattainability, their complex relationship with textual borders, the travel narrative, with the author himself.
By design, Nabokov’s woman is often assigned a short-term tourist visa with a firm expiration date. Her departure is facilitated by death or involuntary absence, which watermarks her into the male protagonist’s narrative, granting him an artistic release or a gift of self-understanding. When she leaves the stage, her portrait remains ambiguous. She can be powerfully enigmatic, but not self-actualized enough to be dynamic or, for even where the terms of her existence are deeply considered or her image beheld reverently, her recognition seems to be limited to the “Works Cited” register of the male narrator’s personal life. As a result, Nabokov’s texts often feature a nomadic woman who seems to live without a narratorial homeland, papers of her own, or storytelling privileges.
This volume explores the “residency status” of Nabokov’s silent nomads—his fleeting lovers, witches, muses, mermaids, and nymphets. As Nabokov scholars analyze the power dynamic of the writer’s narrative of male desire, they ponder—are these female characters directionless wanderers or covert operatives in the terrain of Nabokov’s text? Whereas each essay addresses a different aspect of Nabokov’s artistic relationship with the feminine, together they explore the politics of representation, authorization, and voicelessness. This collection offers new ways of reading and teaching Nabokov and is poised to appeal to a wide range of student and scholarly audiences.

Chapter 4, "Nabokov's Mermaid: 'Spring in Fialta'" by Elena Rakhimova-Sommers, is not available in the ebook format due to digital rights restrictions. You can find the earlier version of the chapter in the journal Nabokov Studies.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 274 • Trim: 6¼ x 9⅜

978-1-4985-0330-3 • Hardback • September 2017 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4985-0332-7 • Paperback • May 2019 • $50.99 • (£39.00)

978-1-4985-0331-0 • eBook • October 2017 • $48.00 • (£37.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Women, Literary Criticism / Russian & Former Soviet Union, Literary Criticism / Feminist

Author

Elena Rakhimova-Sommers is principal lecturer in Russian and global literature at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Table of Contents

Introduction – Nabokov’s Passportless Wanderer: A Study of Nabokov’s Woman – Elena Rakhimova-Sommers
Part I: Fugitive Souls
1. Via Dolores: The Passage of the Feminine as Contraband in Nabokov’s Fiction – Sofia Ahlberg
2. Queen Sacrifice: The Feminine Figure of Power and Nabokov’s Strategy of Loss – Alisa Zhulina
3. A Small Mad Hope: Pale Fire, Hazel Shade, and the Oedipal Disaster – Matthew Roth
4. Nabokov’s Mermaid: “Spring in Fialta” – Elena Rakhimova-Sommers
Part II: Figments of Desire
1. Jealously Guarded Secrets: Nabokov’s Women and the Vicissitudes of Desire – David Rampton
2. The Text(ure) of Desire: Garments and Ornaments in Nabokov’s Maidens – Marie Bouchet
3. Reading the Woman on the Train – David H. J. Larmour
Part III: In Search of a (Lost) Voice
1. Hearing the Female Voice in Vladimir Nabokov’s Fiction – Julian W. Connolly
2. “The Fascination of Pebbles”: Fictional Lives of Véra Nabokov – Olga Voronina
3. Nabokov in an Evening Gown – Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
4. Speak, Mademoiselle: Nabokov's Authorial Posture Revisited – Lara Delage-Toriel

Reviews

Rakhimova-Sommers (Russian/global literature, Rochester Institute of Technology) brings together 11 Nabokov scholars to study the thorny question of the role of women in his work. Her exemplary introduction succinctly describes not only the content but also the critical approaches most Nabokovians have used to assess the place and importance of women’s voices in the writer’s narration. She also provides an intelligent, enlightening, and concise survey of the way women in Nabokov’s works have, in the main, been categorized by Nabokov's critics: i.e., as passive participants in the male narrator’s active storytelling. The essays. . . fall into three categories—women as fugitive souls, women as figments of desire, and women as lost voices—and the editor arranges the volume accordingly. This collection is a most welcome—and timely—addition to Nabokov criticism. At last scholars are illuminating the fact that women play a more prominent role in narration and the narrative than previously suggested. Required reading for scholars and students interested in Nabokov or women’s studies.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.
— Choice Reviews

Shrinking violets no more: A liberating look at Nabokov’s fictional women and a much needed – and long overdue – addition to Nabokov Studies!
— Galya Diment, University of Washington

Elena Rakhimova-Sommers' edited volume is a welcome contribution to Nabokov studies that urges us to listen to the voices of Nabokov’s heroines and to chart the territories they occupy. By engaging with a large number of texts, Nabokov’s Women offers a rich and varied investigation into the bodies, voices and destinies of heroines who inhabit and haunt Nabokov’s fiction, from Mary to Ada.
— Monica Manolescu, University of Strasbourg

This collection begins to fill in a long-neglected area of Vladimir Nabokov’s work . . . [It has] many treasures, and it points toward a rich future of continued discovery.
— Slavic Review