Writing Monsters

Most Shakespeare tragedies. Paradise Lost. A Clockwork Orange. House of Cards.

What do the above works have in common?

They feature a protagonist who is thoroughly reprehensible - yet, since they're the focalising character, we're forced to view events from their perspective. We watch Iago gleefully wreck a marriage and egg on Urquhart / Underwood as he schemes into the corridors of power. A certain school of thought claims that by letting ourselves be deceived by Milton's Satan, only to be gradually disillusioned, we're enacting the Fall ourselves.

Employed well, it's a fantastic device, making for an unforgettable (albeit twisted) story. It isn't to everybody's taste, however. Some readers won't thank you for sharing the thoughts of a psychopath and may complain even when you gave them ample warning.

Today I'm going to look at one of the most controversial leads in fiction, Lolita's Humbert Humbert, and how he influenced the writing of my own monstrous protagonist, Miss Benson.

An enchanted hunter?

Lolita is simultaneously one of the most lauded and vilified novels of the last century. On discovering its plot - pedophile abducts and terrorises his orphaned stepdaughter - many declare they'll never read it. Thanks to the Kubrick film, it's filtered into popular consciousness as a teen sex pot seducing a hapless academic. Even a chunk of readers interpret it this way. This is how Humbert presents it, and who's going to doubt the word of a serial sex offender on trial for murder? Of course he'll be scrupulously honest.

Read carefully, Lolita is actually the story of a pathetic, deluded man in love with his own lies. Nabokov lampoons him mercilessly, whether through his own narration, where he's ludicrously vain and pretentious (he describes himself as a "big hunk of movieland manhood" and uses such risible gems as "the vortex of the toilet" or "the sceptre of my passion") or through tactless, down to earth Lo, who's stuck listening to his drivel ("Speak English!") This is a man who blanches at slang, swearing and anything else he deems vulgar, but thinks it's acceptable to prey upon children. He defends his behaviour by claiming there's a rare breed of demoniac girls he calls nymphets, who have knowledge and guile beyond their years, yet manages to find one wherever he goes.

Bizarrely, some readers take him at face value. They only see the suave, erudite surface, and agree with him that because Lolita has lost her virginity to an older boy, she has no innocence to protect. (How do we know this isn't one of Humbert's face saving lies? He planned to ravish her before he knew this). They prefer to recast it as an unorthodox love story, with Lo the knowing minx and Humbert her bedazzled slave.

Perhaps it's because of the inclusion of Quilty, Humbert's rival, who's far closer to the image of a "real" pedophile. Quilty's tendencies are an open secret but he's protected by his status as a famous playwright; he's bombastic, unalluring and sports a sinister moustache. Chuck into the mix Gaston Godin, a lonely old professor with a yen for young boys, and you realise what Humbert's up to. Since he isn't a sleazy crook like the one or a sad sack like the other, he can't possibly be a congenital pervert.

Write your own monster

I first borrowed Lolita aged sixteen (cue splutters from the librarian, scandalised family friends etc.) Though much of it went over my head - and likely always will - I was fascinated by its depiction of a deranged criminal with zero self awareness, and filed it away for future use. I went on to uni, studied creative writing. Although I had various projects on the go, the time was never right for a Humbertian figure. There was only one condition: she had to be female. Evil women are woefully underrepresented in fiction, possibly because they're taken as an attack on the sex when they do appear. (Saying more about the misogyny of critics, surely).

I was rummaging through my old papers, trying to kickstart a new story, when I came across a poem I'd written called Miss Amy. A morality piece about an aristocrat racking up dead lovers, it's narrated by a judgemental servant - but who was this unknown woman, and what was her relationship to Amy?

Suddenly Benny materialised: the ghastly, egocentric female Humbert I'd been brewing for years. Like him, she professes to be in love but has no understanding of or interest in her beloved; like him, she sneers down her nose at everybody else despite her inferior rank and moral turpitude. It was so liberating debunking all those hoary old governess stories! Don't tell me that The Sound of Music wouldn't be greatly improved by intrigue and sapphic shenanigans.

I lightly pencilled in a backstory - a cruel and neglectful mother, a dalliance with a teacher - but that doesn't really matter. Sociopaths have no conscience so they have no memory. Benny begins when the story proper begins: when she claps eyes on Amy and falls head first into obsession.