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The Housewife
– A name taken from the title of Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel of the same name to describe a passive, child-like woman who offers herself to men sexually while demanding nothing in return. In the book, Lolita is a prepubescent girl who becomes an object of erotic obsession for Humbert Humbert, the pedophilic protagonist. Friedan uses the name as a metaphor for “a girl-child” and a “sexual object” who serves as an escape from the “grownup woman” to whom a man is married. The “Lolita” type is the antithesis of “the devouring wife” who “[devotes] all her aggressive energies, as well as her sexual energies, to living through [her husband].”
Lolita Quotes in The Feminine Mystique
The The Feminine Mystique quotes below are all either spoken by Lolita or refer to Lolita. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 11
Quotes
According to Kinsey, the majority of American middle-class males’ sexual outlets are not in relations with their wives after the fifteenth year of marriage; at fifty-five, one out of two American men is engaging in extramarital sex. His male sex-seeking—the office romance, the casual or intense affair, even the depersonalized sex-for-sex’s sake…is, as often as not, motivated by the need to escape from the devouring wife. Sometimes the man seeks the human relationship that got lost when he became an appendage to his wife’s aggressive “home career.” Sometimes his aversion to his wife finally makes him seek in sex an object totally divorced from any human relationship. Sometimes, in phantasy more often than in fact, he seeks a girl-child, a Lolita, as sexual object—to escape that grownup woman who is devoting all her aggressive energies, as well as her sexual energies, to living through him.
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Lolita Term Timeline in The Feminine Mystique
The timeline below shows where the term Lolita appears in The Feminine Mystique. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 11: The Sex-Seekers
...affairs—in an attempt to escape from the devouring wife. Some chose to have affairs with Lolita types, either in fantasy or in fact, to escape from the grown-up woman at home...
(full context)
