people to do, use or talk about a particular thing as people find it offensive or embarrassing” (Oxford Learners’ Dictionary). Incest and pedophilia are taboos that are heavily prevalent in the novel Lolita. Although the novel is provocative and contains elements that are uncomfortable to most readers, Lolita should not be censored nor banned from any literature courses. According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, censorship is described as “the act of changing or suppressing speech or writing that is
Vladimir Nabokov started writing Lolita while teaching at Cornell University in 1949. He continued writing the novel while traveling with his wife around the country on summer butterfly hunting trips (Nabokov was an esteemed lepidopterist, or butterfly specialist), and completed the novel in 1954. Publishers were predictably skittish about a story narrated by a pedophile, and it did not find its way into European print until 1955 (it was published in America in 1958). Controversy over the subject
A couple has been trying to make a family for many years. Being a mother is the only thing in the world that would keep the woman sane. She is told that she can never have kids of her own. In another scenario, a husband only married his wife because he thought she was pregnant. It turned out to all be in her head; however, she would forever strive to be a mother. Both couples struggle with the reality of infertility. In his play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Edward Albee utilizes dysfunctional