As the joyriding continues, Humbert still constantly creates situations in his mind which justify his keeping Lolita captive. One passage which particularly stuck out to me is the long-winded explanation Humbert gives to Lolita about their relationship. Though the sole purpose of this speech, in Humbert's conscious mind, is to "terror[ize] Lo" into not forming any opinion of her own, it becomes so extensive that one is left to question whether Humbert is not also going on this tangent to instill confidence in himself. He goes on and on about how he "want[s] to protect [Lo]...from all the horrors that happen to little girls in coal sheds and alley ways"; how he, as both sexual partner and father, wants to keep Lolita from the horrors of the outside (and in H.H.'s mind, presumably, "vulgar") world. This is obviously delusion--if Humbert thinks he is really protecting Lolita from anything except for forces which may empower and sway her from his grasp, he is most certainly spraying this nonsense for himself more than for Lo. He wants to be confident that he really is, in no way, in the wrong. On the following page (150), Humbert goes on to state "I am not a criminal sexual psychopath taking indecent liberties with a child." Has Dolores ever stopped and accused him of being a "sexual psychopath?" Maybe so, but her voice concerning for that subject is, for the most part, left completely out of the text, and so this statement rings more as self-confidence inducing blather. H.H. keeps with this lengthy monologue, stopping for more unnecessary statements--"I am your daddum, Lo"--along the way, though he will soon start citing justification from a book about the behavior of "normal girls," whom he assures Lolita that she is one of. Humbert reads to Lo from the book: "Among Sicilians sexual relations between a father and his daughter are accepted as a matter of course, and the girl who participates in such relationship is not looked upon with disapproval by the society of which she is part," following this with "I'm a great admirer of Sicilians" (150). Since when has Humbert mentioned Sicilians as a source of inspiration? Of admiration? Of anything? He absorbs facts from books, out of his own anxiety, and perceives them to ring true because they provide some logical justification to his actions. The close reader can see, then, that Humbert is not telling Lolita all of this to instill any confidence in the situation in her--it is more or less for himself. Why else would he "advise" a thirteen year old not "to consider [her]self [his] cross-country slave," or declare conclusively (but not concluding his speech) "I am your father, and I am speaking English, and I love you?" These declarative occurrences appear so often in H.H.'s effort to "terrorize" Lo that it seems, in reality, he is trying to calm his anxieties with self-justification.
I think I may follow Humbert's patterns of justification to the book's conclusion, eventually developing my observations into a more precise essay topic.
This is certainly a workable topic, since - as your post shows - H.H.'s justifications are many and varied, from the magical to claiming to have a disease or disorder to claiming that his behavior is entirely normal to depicting Lolita as the the seductress, and so on. One subcategory within this is H.H.'s uses of science. Sometimes, as in his hesitant poisoning plans, science is an obstacle. At various times in the book he has to face the 1950s "scientific" view of sex - which mostly views people as biological, primates - before the backlash against "biological determinism." H.H. claims that the idea of "innocence" (or purity in the physical sense) has been "thoroughly debunked by science," and, overall, he seems to resort to pseudo-scientific explanations as the book goes on. Early on, his justifications are a mix of science and magic, as if he is an anthropologist studying nymphets and their "victims." Another subcategory would be resorts to convention, normality: he walks on both sides of this street. He says hebephilia is entirely normal; he also poses as the rebel or iconoclast among conventional people. So, you can start with the justifications and narrow down.
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