some thoughts on the girl with the dragon tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo follows the protagonist, Blumkvist, a journalist and co-owner of a progressive magazine who is facing a lawsuit for libel. He is hired by the elderly CEO of a company to investigate a decades-old family mystery. Along the way, he begins working with a younger women who is a skilled investigator (and has a dragon tattoo) to solve the mystery.

I hardly ever read mysteries, but I thought this book was fun. At no point did I ever feel like I knew the answer to the mystery. Several dynamics made this book interesting. First, the libel scandal and whatever was behind it threatened the financial stability of Blumkvist's magazine and put time pressure on Blumkvist and his colleagues to make some kind of plan to keep the magazine from going under. Blumkvist's relationships become strained as he is forced to made some pragmatic decisions, in conflict with his presumably progressive politics, to save his magazine.

Another theme was trust and the delicate balance between the desire to investigate and respect for privacy. Blukvist and the girl with the dragon tattoo both work as investigators in their own ways, but they also have lives with some unconventional, complex aspects that they are secretive about. Having to work together under time pressure meant that they needed to collaborate effectively, which necessitates trust. Part of the story is about watching them cultivate trust by negotiating between the need to know about and understand each other and the desire to be private, holding certain boundaries and relaxing others along the way.

The most prominent theme in this book was of violence against women. The original Swedish title of the book translates roughly to Men Who Hate Women, and some of the book's focal scenes depict men inflicting sexual violence against women. Their actions and mental states are described in grotesque detail. These men are perverse, and they seem excited, even aroused, by humiliating others and making them feel powerless.

In contrast, Blumkvist was a gentle, thoughtful character. He was kind to the girl with the dragon tattoo, even though she is "different" and anti-social, even unpleasant. She felt safe around him, and other women presumably did too. All the women seem to want to sleep with him (and they do). He's almost too popular with the ladies to be a real person--in a review of the film adaptation, one reviewer critiques that Blumkvist was too much like a Swedish James Bond. In the first film adaptation, he is even played by Daniel Craig.

A potential critique of the book is that it is too heavy handed with its portrayals of good and evil. The perpetrators of violence in the book are almost comically horrible. On the other hand, Blumkvist is gentle and respectful of people's privacy and boundaries. The fact that women are so attracted to Blumkvist, whereas the bad men are "sadistic creeps" (so says the girl with the dragon tattoo) sometimes reads like overt moralizing: If you are nice to women, they will like you. Don't be horrible!

You could also argue that it an overly simplistic view of sexual violence against women. In fact, more violence against women is done by people who likely appear to be relatively "normal" than by crazed, evil strangers with sound-proofed torture chambers. A survey conducted in 2010 in the United States found that 51.1% of women respondents who were victims of rape reported being raped by their intimate partners, and an additional 40.8% by an acquaintance. Those who are seeking a realistic exploration of violence against women will be disappointed by this book.

These critiques are not wrong, but I think they miss some of the point. These might actually be clever techniques for directing the reader's attention.

Another example of this is the notable lack of description about Blumkvist's sexuality in this book. Although he sleeps with many women in the story, his experiences with these women are not described in much detail, in stark contrast with the gory depictions of sexual violence inflicted by other men. This means that we know, based on the book, what evil, debasing of women looks like, but we are left with questions about what wholesome, respectful, non-predatory version of sexuality look like, how a good, respectful heterosexual cis-man experiences sexuality, and how he feels about the women he is with.

I think that this is left out for several reasons. Firstly, these are incredibly difficult questions, and leaving descriptions out allows the author to sidestep them. Second, the author wanted to leave it to our imaginations. We are supposed to fill in these gaps with our own views about what Blumkvist's sexuality is like. This has several benefits. There is a wide variety in opinions about what a wholesome cis-man's sexuality is supposed to be like. By making the reader do this work, the author can ensure that they, regardless of their beliefs about this, come away with the feeling that Blumkvist is a good guy and his sexuality is healthy and wholesome. The other benefit is that, because we filled in the gaps of the story in a way that made us more certain that Blumkvist is a nice guy, and because we provided the evidence for this (not the author), we will not have to interact with the nuances of the difficult questions described above.

These techniques--1) the heavy-handed moral messaging, 2) the simplifying of violence against women, 3) relying on us to fill in the gaps, to make Blumkvist the good guy--frees us from having to grapple with the difficult questions of how sexuality interacts with gender, age, and other systems of power, allowing us to instead become ensnared by the mystery.

Ultimately, this is not a feminist novel--it is a mystery novel in which women's issues is the setting. If you approach it for what it is, these critiques are not so much shortcomings, but maybe techniques that improve the reader experience.