Three Score & Ten

But it never even occurred to Elisabeth, placid, thirty-five-year-old Elisabeth, that her husband might deceive her. She knew that he had had little adventures before his marriage, and she remembered that she herself, as a small girl, had been secretly in love with an old actor who used to visit her father and enliven dinner with beautiful imitations of farmyard sounds. She had heard and read that husbands and wives constantly deceived one another; indeed, adultery was the core of gossip, romantic poetry, funny stories and famous operas. But she was quite simply and steadfastly convinced that her own marriage was a very special, precious and pure tie that could never be broken.

Vladimir Nabokov, Laughter in the Dark

She had been spiteful, if you please, at the age of one, when she used to throw her toys out of her crib so that her poor mother should keep picking them up, the villainous infant! Now, at twelve, she was a regular pest, said Haze. All she wanted from life was to be one day a strutting and prancing baton twirler or a jitterbug. Her grades were poor, but she was better adjusted in her new school than in Pisky (Pisky was the Haze home town in the Middle West. The Ramsdale house was her late mother-in-law’s. They had moved to Ramsdale less than two years ago). ‘Why was she unhappy there?’ ‘Oh,’ said Haze, ‘poor me should know, I went through that when I was a kid: boys twisting one’s arm, banging into one with loads of books, pulling one’s hair, hurting one’s breasts, flipping one’s skirt. Of course, moodiness is a common concomitant of growing up, but Lo exaggerates. Sullen and evasive. Rude and defiant. Stuck Viola, an Italian schoolmate, in the seat with a fountain pen. Know what I would like? If you, monsieur, happened to still be here in the fall, I’d ask you to help her with her homework – you seem to know everything, geography, mathematics, French.’ ‘Oh, everything,’ answered monsieur.

Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita