Foreword
When Vladimir Nabokov created his immortal "Lolita", he was formulating the prototype of the child-woman, whose blend of candor and ingenuousness has through the ages been capable of luring the most mature and sophisticated of males to erotic desire. Yet his teenaged heroine was far from being so naive about her sexual appeal to Humbert. Humbert as the latter erroneously suspected-and, indeed, it was that failure to appreciate the degree of intuitive womanhood which she possessed which led to his undoing.
The totally uninitiated teenaged female, just emerging from puberty, has for many adult males the most dangerous allure of all. They imagine themselves as her benevolent initiator, and they are attracted by her very innocence because it suggests the age-old prize of untouched virginity. For centuries, this virtue of maidenhood was esteemed above all else in the female. It is only with our current sexual revolution that we have come to learn that it is not at all synonymous with reciprocal erotic passion.
In reality, as modern psychiatrists declare, the desire of a mature, aging male for an under-age, nubile, budding female has at base the subconscious temptation of incest. From the dawn of time, society has imposed a stringent taboo upon relationships between father and daughter, mother and son or any other immediate blood kinships. Initially, in the era of primitive man, virginity in the young female was allocated as a gift to be bestowed upon the warrior-male of a neighboring tribe whose conjugal link with the tribe of the girl was sought to bring about peace between both tribes and a strengthening of these neighboring groups against common human and predatory animal enemies. If her virginity were taken by her own father, she would no longer be desirable to the warrior-male.
Yet, just because propinquity is born out of proximity and because that which is taboo becomes all the more tempting, we find increasingly numerous instances of incestuous relationships in our present-day society. Nor are these limited to ethnic groups or the lower economic classes by any means. Dr. Kirstein Weinberg, a nationally known authority on incest, maintains that the proportion of such illicit unions may actually be greater among the well to do and the better educated classes, because of the powerful stimuli of fantasy and imagination.
In Mark Conroy's new novel, Kristina, the thirteen-year-old heroine, arrives at the dawn of her adolescence totally ignorant of sexual knowledge or awareness. Her vague yearnings, she innocently believes, are attributable to "growing-up pains." On the day of her birthday, out of the seemingly innocuous ritual of "birthday spanks", both she and her father are transformed out of their inevitable roles to make him her initiator and lover. Thereafter, as her brother and uncle discover the subtle alteration of her young psyche, she becomes a true Lolita, childishly aware of her own powers, even eager to test them in the deliciously exciting game of pretending to be grownup.
Since her father and mother have been separated, Kristina becomes the wife-substitute symbol for her father, not unlike the Biblical precedent of Lot and his daughters. And when at last her father falls in love with an adult female and ultimately marries her, Kristina makes the discovery of her own initial jealousy as a love-rival, impatiently awaits her own maturity to lead a life now enlightened by what she has learned through almost accidental experience.
The story of Kristina is not at all unique. From it, we may learn that it is sensible as well as advisable to acquaint under-age males and females with a sound sexual education that will stand them in good stead in later life to banish the inhibitions of fear, guilt and shame.
-The Publisher