I tend to get a little caught up in nature symbolism when I read fiction, and Lolita so far has been no exception. I've done a little thinking and research on some of the "natural" things Humbert mentions on pages 39 and 40, when he sees Dolores Haze for the first time.
"...a fruit vase in the middle, containing nothing but the still glistening stone of one plum."
The first thing any good writing major will think of upon seeing the word "plum" is "This is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams, a little poem about less-than-strong feelings of guilt. I can't imagine how Nabokov would have felt about WCW, and it's doubtful that he would be referencing poetry at all in this sentence, but it makes for an interesting interpretation, I think.
Popular dream interpretation website DreamMoods.com offers a much more plausible reading, saying that dreaming of plums is symbolic of youth and vitality. Since Humbert is seeing the stone, or pit, of a plum and not the plum itself, I think it's safe to assume that this particular mention of the fruit is meant to foreshadow Lo's loss of youth and vitality.
"'That was my Lo,' she said, 'and these are my lilies.'"
I knew before going into this that lilies are often associated with death, specifically how a soul can regain its innocence after a body dies. Further searching taught me that lilies represented motherhood in Greek mythology, and that lilies hold masculine qualities in a handful of old wive's tales about predicting the gender of an unborn baby. I might be pulling from too many different places here, but it seems to me that the lilies in the garden are symbolic not only of Lo's childlike innocence, but Humbert's "mommy issues" that were sarcastically thrown into the earlier part of the novel.
I mean, you could certainly write about flora - meaning plant - imagery in the book. "Lilies" is also one of the few words / names that has the two "L" sounds, as in Lolita. Charlotte unknowingly equates them by mentioning them together. Where do the flower references appear? Certainly when H.H. thinks of girls. And this relates the larger subject of nature. Flowers, like butterflies, come in types, species and subspecies. In The Odyssey the Lotus Eaters are dreamers. If you're game, you will find the flower theme is ample and relates to everything.
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