1 An unconventional but influential cultural ambassador, he re-imagined the international relevance of the Russian literary tradition as well as the stylistic and thematic possibilities of the late twentieth-century transnational novel. Nabokov took the tradition further, however, by transporting and transplanting these figures into an American milieu, which imbues the notion of poshlost and the pravednitsa figure with new meanings, as the women have the possibility to encounter American consumerism of the mid-20th century.ĭespite-or perhaps, because of-the controversy that he inspired in the last decades of his life, Nabokov has been acknowledged as the 'first among Russian-born literati to attain the 'interliterary stature of a world writer'' (Shapiro 2009: 101). I argue that despite Nabokov’s protestations against his precursor, Dostoevsky had a tangible impact on his works that informed the former’s portrayal of his heroines.

The discussion is focused mainly on mothers and children by way of exploring the central issue of cancelled children and mothers in both Laughter in the Dark and Lolita. Through the discussion of key concepts such as poshlost and the figure of pravednisa, the essay articulates the main intertextual similarities and differences between the writers, positing that Nabokov developed the stock female characters through adding dimensionality through them and giving them status as people in their own right, something that Dostoevsky did not aspire to in his Notes from the Underground and Crime and Punishment, despite his focus on morality.

The discussion centers on the development of characters and on the issue of the apotheosis of the Russian woman, which Nabokov inherits from Dostoevsky, as both are members of the ‘lesser tradition’ in Russian literature. This essay focuses on probing the complexities of Dostoevsky’s influence on Nabokov through the consideration of female characters in Laughter in the Dark and Lolita.

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