Abstract
Abstract: This article explores the possibility that Nabokov's famous example of trick reading and trick writing may be one of his most political pieces of writing as well. Drawing upon the author's insistence on the story's place of composition—Ithaca, New York—the article places the story within the context of the women's rights movement that was born in nearby Seneca Falls. The early women's movement was closely allied with spiritualism, a central topic in Nabokov's story. Combining close reading with an historicizing focus, the article discusses the poetics of the story while simultaneously exploring the relationship between sexual predation and the acute examination of a text. In the end, the article suggests that for all his vaunted non-politicism, Nabokov may have been a vessel possessed and guided by the demands for female "participation," just as his story's narrator was. On the plane of meta-fiction, the Vane sisters manage to vote.
Published Version
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