Upon entering Cane, we are struck by the blunt sexuality of the opening vignette/story/passage, “Karintha.” We meet the exuberant titular character, and although only twelve, we are informed that she is a “wild flash” and that “men had always wanted her.” Karintha discovers the world of sex: “perhaps she had felt her parents loving,” and with this knowledge she plays ‘home’ with a boy. After this discovery, old men no longer ride “her hobby-horse upon their knees.”
“Karintha” almost immediately evokes the image of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, which came decades later and mirrors its intimate sexuality. In Lolita, we meet another titular character, a 12 year-old girl that emanates enthusiasm and desirability. Lolita becomes the center of the affections of Humbert Humbert, a writer that lives in her home (and later marries her mother, Charlotte, to stay close to her). Humbert dreams of touching Lolita, dreads time spent alone with her mother and survives coitus with Charlotte by dreaming Lolita shares the bed with him. However, throughout the novel, Humbert Humbert stresses that he could not imagine tarnishing the purity of his lovely “nymphet,” and while he hungers for Lolita, he does not allow himself to touch her.
However, while at camp, Lolita has sex with an older boy and this ignites Humbert Humbert’s impatience. Soon after, he kidnaps Lolita, drugs her, has sex with her and lives with her for years before she finally escapes.
The works struck me as too similar to simply be coincidentally related. This connect reminded me of Joe Moran’s definition of “structuralism” in Interdisciplinarity. On page 76, Moran informs us, “structuralist approaches tend to emphasize ‘intertextuality’, the notion that texts are formulated not through acts of originality by individual authors but through interaction and dialogue with other texts.” Structuralist analyses focuses on the “form” texts share with one another.
While it is possible that Jean Toomer’s Cane did not influence Lolita, structuralism would contend that, by existing in the same greater universe of literature, Nabokov must have been affected or impacted in some way by “Karintha.” One could also argue that these stories, “Karintha” and Lolita, mirror the same “form,” a discussion of sexuality and youth.