The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is both an effective detective story and a powerful cry about the situation of women in modern society. Stieg Larsson creates, in the first volume of the Millenium trilogy, a fascinating cast of characters and an engaging plot, but really excels when putting at the foundation of the story the problem of how women are explored and discarded in our brutal masculine world.

The protagonist is Mikael Blomkvist, the Swedish editor-in-chief of Millenium’s monthly magazine, who was a hated but respected journalist until he accused a powerful businessman of corruption without the necessary evidence and was sued in return. Taking advantage of Mikael’s resulting professional instability, the old tycoon Henrik Vanger hires him to assist in an old investigation that has haunted his family for more than two decades: the murder of the girl Harriet Vanger. Alone and without any prospect of success, Mikael seeks the help of a very peculiar private investigator called Lisbeth Salander.

Blomkvist is described as an incorruptible man who is politically engaged and deeply critical of his society. A utopian journalist who goes after the truth and considers unraveling the rottenness of the rich his personal mission. He constantly attacks the Swedish media, claiming that economic journalists are no more than parrots who repeat notes issued by others without question, when they are not simply rascals who distort information to manipulate the people in favor of the bosses’ interests, that is. “In this way, the future of Sweden is also being created, and all remaining trust in journalists as a corps of professionals is being compromised,” the character reflects bitterly at the beginning.

Blomkvist’s new client, Henrik Vanger, is a powerful man who doesn’t mince his words. The first description he makes of his family is emblematic: “They are for the most part thieves, misers, bullies, and incompetents. I ran the company for thirty-five years – almost all the time in the midst of relentless bickering. They were my worst enemies, far worse than competing companies or the government.” And it is precisely the members of the Vanger family who are the prime suspects in the murder that Mikael must investigate on Hedestad, an isolated island on the Swedish mainland.

Harriet’s case is a typical “closed room mystery,” a term used by the characters themselves. She disappeared the day a car accident blocked Hedestad’s only exit across a bridge. As no one could get to or escape the island, the killer can only be one of the people present at the time of the accident. Henrik makes it clear to Blomkvist that his relatives are horrible people – several are even Nazi sympathizers – and that they are, above all else, very intelligent.

The protagonist is isolated on an island in the midst of the Swedish winter, completely surrounded by dangerous men who he must interrogate, knowing that one of them is capable of murder. He was hired by a powerful tycoon famous for his cleverness, who treats Blomkvist kindly but doesn’t hesitate to manipulate the journalist when it suits him. The atmosphere, then, is of dread and impending doom: it doesn’t seem that Blomkvist stands a chance.

In the beginning, when the characters are still being presented, Stieg Larson manages to keep us interested by inciting questions about them – it pushes us to pay attention to the details of their characterization and question what’s happening. If the protagonist is such an efficient and impeccable journalist, how did he allow himself to publish such an important piece against a powerful man with so little evidence? If Henrik Vanger is so clever and wise, how does he not know what happened to Harriet?

However, the plot of The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo is a mere pretext for the author to criticize the way women are treated in modern society. The theme is represented by the character of Lisbeth Salander, the competent private investigator who agrees to help Blomkvist in the Harriet case.

Her first scene is from the perspective of a man, her boss Dragan Armansky. She is characterized as this strange figure who doesn’t belong anywhere and so, despite being very good at her work, is isolated from her peers: “he thought for the thousandth time that nobody seemed more out of place in a prestigious security firm than she did.” In her initial description, Lisbeth is observed from the point of view of a man who is hierarchically superior to her, with a strong focus on her beauty and physical appearance, reinforcing the theme of male dominance: “Her extreme slenderness would have made a career in modelling impossible, but with the right make-up her face could have put her on any billboard in the world.”

Lisbeth Salander, however, is a symbol of revolt. Despite being languid and small, she is undeniably the strongest character in the book. Her narrative arc is the most intense, and because it deals with sexual abuse and mistreatment, it fits the book’s main theme more than the journey of the supposed protagonist, Blomkvist. She is the one who gives payback: she is a harbinger of long-due punishment, delivering it to rapists, murderers, and any cruel individual who has the misfortune of catching her attention. She captivates us precisely due to the contrast between her fragile appearance and her relentless fury.

Larsson works with the mistreatment of women in a raw way. At the beginning of each chapter, for example, he displays alarming statistics such as: “Thirteen percent of the women in Sweden have been subjected to aggravated sexual assault outside of a sexual relationship.” So, when Lisbeth reflects that as “a girl she was legal prey,” the hatred she feels for her society becomes palpable. People who say “Oh, but look at what she was wearing,” in cases of rape, as if the victim had contributed in some way to the crime, are fiercely attacked by the story, with their cruel rhetoric being constantly criticized. In another instant, after a woman is raped, she concludes that it is not worth going to the police, because they would point at her looks and say that “she should be proud that someone had even bothered.” The police here are accurately depicted as a tool to attack and control the population, serving to oppress it rather than protect it.

Stieg Larsson was a journalist at the time he wrote the book and his craft is noticeable not only in his passion for the social issues of his country but also in the precision with which he describes elements inherent to the protagonist’s profession: the level of technical details present in the scene in which Blomkvist analyzes negatives in an old file, for example, is astounding. The author also succeeds in the book’s small moments of humor, which, being sparse, work precisely because of their unpredictability – a great example being the unusual comparisons between one of the members of the Vanger family and the creature Gollum of The Lord of the Rings.

Larsson only falters when it comes to the level of exposition in the dialogues and to the believability of some of the protagonist’s actions during the investigation, since Blomkvist prefers to directly confront the main suspects of the crime than to inform Henrik of his discoveries first. On the other hand, the author deserves applause for being able to naturally connect the murder plot with the main theme of the book, generating a climax that sounds thematically fitting and, therefore, satisfying.

After all, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo may contain a well-developed plot, an exciting climax, and memorable characters, but it’s its main theme the thing that will probably most impact the reader. So, is even more important to notice that, although the focus of the novel’s criticism is Sweden, the problems described in the book are universal, occurring in virtually every country in the world – and the situation is even getting worse in some.

February 25, 2015.

Review originally published in Portuguese on October 17, 2014.