imagery is prevalent in every description: it resonates even in his portrayal of America to his first wife as ‘the country of rosy children and great trees’, where ‘rosy children’ symbolises it as a country which may provide and sustain his sexual desire. Not only this, but the imagery of the ‘great trees’ is often associated with sex; for Humbert, this connection is more resonant, whose first sexualised interaction and defining point for his character happens ‘through the darkness and tender trees’. This is the fruitless tryst with Annabel Leigh, stunting his emotional growth to the extent that he seeks young women such as Lolita, in order to replicate the ‘tender’ bond he had with Annabel. Note that ‘tender’ itself may connote fragility and youth; thus the parallel becomes clearer and through this sensual imagery between the trees, Annabel, and Lolita, there is further insight gained as to Humbert’s character. The delicacy of the precise word choice in ‘tender’ is then made more obvious in the more visceral impact that the pastoral setting has on Humbert in the following lines: As a lovely, lonely, supercilious grove (oaks, I thought; […]) started to echo greenly the rush of our car, a red and ferny road on our right turned its head before slanting into the woodland, and I suggested we might perhaps— “Drive on,” my Lo cried shrilly. “Righto. Take it easy.” (Down, poor beast, down.) Insight it may be, although only can be fleetingly cast as such insofar as the comic ‘down poor beast, down’ veils the tender description of the woods. There are more explicit references to the ‘beast’ of Humbert, referring to his [p*n*s], in lines such as ‘between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock’. Within the text, the fact that the vulnerability of the setting is concealed or dispersed by humour shows a self-awareness from Humbert in his defensivene>