Women, exile, past and other puppeteer’s strings in Nabokov’s short fiction

This paper approaches the role of women, past and exile in Nabokov’s short story. First, we will understand how Vladimir Nabokov uses the female figure to stand for his lost Russia and to vent his feelings of nostalgia. Nabokov’s short stories, especially the first ones, are based on Russian expatriates’ loss and loneliness. However, the author finally changes his attitude. Then, different examples of his later production are given in which the author ironizes upon some literary motifs, especially related to female characters, in order to distance himself from his feelings of loss. We will appreciate how Nabokov uses the female figures skillfully to create problems and literary puzzles for the reader to solve in his short stories. At the end, the paper sheds light upon how the female figures are associated with problematizing literary conventions as a way of exploring different fictional possibilities in Vladimir Nabokov’s last short stories.