Strangers Shipwrecked in a Strange Language : Mademoiselle O and Pnin

This article compares Vladimir Nabokov’s portrait of his childhood Swiss French governess, called Mademoiselle O, in his memoir Speak, Memory with his fictional depiction of the eponymous Russian émigré protagonist of the novel Pnin. The analysis focuses on Nabokov’s treatment of the themes of memory and language. Although these works differ in genre and length, I show similarities in Nabokov’s characterizations of these two expatriates, as well as in his depiction of how they relate to their new cultural and linguistic environments. Mademoiselle O and Pnin both experience and embody a sense of displacement geographically, culturally, and linguistically. This is expressed through their nostalgia, physical awkwardness, and imperfect communication in their respective adopted languages (Russian for Mademoiselle O, English for Pnin). The character of Pnin can thus be viewed as a later development of that of Mademoiselle O, transplanted from Europe to the Ne