I am sure that it is pedestrian to say at this point, but Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is one of my favorite novels. I’d go so far as to suggest that it inspired aspects of my writing, most notably the way that an ambiguous surrounding will slowly become more detailed. There is something to Larsson’s skills as a writer that compels me with how he could dump endless pages of information and I’ll be able to easily follow it. I’m not a true crime nerd. I will fade out if I have to read a list of more than three things. In general, I’m convinced that I would be an awful detective as I’m not all that observant.
What makes the novel particularly endearing may be the fact that I am compelled by its central leads Mikael Blomqvist and, more importantly, Lisbeth Salander. To me, their chemistry speaks to something that inspired me first as a viewer watching the Noomi Rapace films then later as a reader. The further that I got into Salander’s back story, it was clear that I shared this affection for Salander that Larsson did. The mystery wasn’t just about the central murder, but who this woman was who seemed to exist outside the realm of polite society. She was a hacker helping Blomqvist when his job at Millennium goes awry. There’s an awful lot of loneliness in those pages, and it all spoke to something internal.
Trying to understand why I love this franchise has been a bit difficult because it is rooted in some darker things. For starters, Larsson created Salander upon witnessing a rape that caused him to feel very guilty. He thought to give this fictional character strength to fight “men who hate women” and ended up creating one of the best international best-sellers of its time. In an even stranger twist, he died before his full original trilogy was ever published. The series would be in rights limbo for years until David Lagercrantz acquired them and, based on my reading of “The Girl in the Spider’s Web,” doesn’t really get it (contrary to popular opinion, I think the film is a vast improvement).
I bring this up because when discussing why I like Salander, it may contradict a lot of obvious evidence. Depending on who you ask, she is this way because of childhood trauma. The family life has some colorful characters that would definitely cause her to build a tough exterior. Even in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” she has to deal with a sexually abusive guardian that leads to a fairly notorious rape scene. It’s in some respects a tired trope and one of the many ways that this qualifies more as pulp than high art. In that respect, I am fine with people who read this character as suffering from PTSD, of abuse, and an unwillingness to trust others.
But I guess something that has become more abundantly clear as time has gone on is that I’ve been most fond of “outsider” characters. I used to think it was more in the Travis Bickel mode, who had this emotional instability. However, I looked at works like Frankenstein (1931), Mulan (1998), and My Fair Lady and I saw that what attracted me to them was their effort to feel like they belonged. They were “outsiders” in some ways, but there was this concerted effort to find humanity and feel like they belong.
Basically, I was responding to coded masking.
As an autistic, the idea of masking is fairly common and one that is often so subliminal for most. It is the effort to put on mannerisms that could help them be accepted by a neurotypical public. I think somewhere in the back of my head, it’s what I latched onto as a young consumer. I’d see these people genuinely work to make a connection and the idea that they could make it, even in minor ways, was so endearing. Unlike reductive examples like Joker (2019), Salander was a figure that seemed very attractive solely because of her confidence, her unwillingness to ever truly be what the world around her wanted to be.
At every possible turn, she felt like an outsider, left on her own to navigate a world that didn’t understand her. When people drove cars, she rode motorcycles. When people got buzz cuts, she preferred Mohawks. It can be argued that Larsson was a bit too on the nose with these details, especially when placed alongside the cold and collected nature of Swedish culture, but it’s what makes her work. You can’t seek to ever understand her without getting up close. Even then, the chances of her opening up are limited. She is selective with who she allows into her world, and that’s because it’s difficult to want anyone to see you in a vulnerable state.
This makes her relationship with Blomqvist interesting. It’s one of the few times that she allows herself to feel any connection. It starts platonic, driven by a murder case wrapped up in some interesting textures. What makes Salander from here interesting isn’t so much how she feels at times disconnected from Blomqvist, but what she does to better the case. She has a hyper-focus that allows her to clue in on details that he can’t. She is able to clue into things that others may miss. Despite her antisocial skills, she’s able to navigate the digital world and access information that Blomqvist can’t. In a broad sense, he’s neurotypical in symbolism witnessing her find new ways to solve the case.
I suppose on some level I am impressed by the style of the character. I want to learn more about her. I want to exist in this underground world that may be a bit too farcical to be real, but in Larsson’s world is full of its own rich language.
Most of all, I relate to the idea that even as she gets close to others, she never quite feels like she connects. Her emotional breakthroughs are small, sometimes hard to be seen by others. She definitely has emotions, but she doesn’t do a great job of always communicating them. It’s why the story doesn’t end in a state of celebration but self-reflection, finding small ways in which Salander remains outside conventions. This is a partnership that will last for every novel to follow, but you can sense the internal tension. She thinks that she has found a connection, but not in the ways that she personally wants.
I understand that this is all a bit broad and that Salander can be read as a variety of things. I was personally nervous choosing to write about her because there is a strong case that she’s suffering trauma, that these are all inherited traits. However, I’m still capable of seeing her intelligence and hyper-focus as appealing, her confidence to navigate a world that doesn’t understand her as something familiar. Even the way she can hack into accounts shows her neurological capabilities to do things that others can’t. She remains a mystery by the end, and that’s probably how she’d want it.
That’s what I love about Larsson’s portion of the series. The mystery is more human than about these random plot details. As the series continues, her life becomes even grander, becoming the things of a great pulpy read. While I think that “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” is a bit overlong, I chalk that up to Larsson dying before getting a chance to do a better edit. Still, he has such an obsession with this character that I admire. Even if it’s all some fantasy he created to overcome his own personal guilt for misogyny, there’s something to be said for how he created a character who is so strong in spite of her flaws.
By the days of Lagercrantz, Salander would turn more into a superhero (in one very dumb chapter, even literally). While I think there’s value in having autistic superpowers in media, it misses the point of what makes her so compelling. She can be human and eccentric, able to exist outside what the world understands. It already is exaggerated, maybe even ridiculous even as it dives into dark and melodramatic sequences that play into the readers’ love of twisted madness. We want to understand how she’ll survive it all, and that to me is why I love the book. I don’t care as much about the mystery, but the way it is solved. Those hours of existing with people you may or may not like is a familiar experience, and when the breakthrough hits you’re bound to feel elated just because she did it. She solved what neurotypicals couldn’t.
Of course, this isn’t always the most obviously present in the films, though they are all worth checking out. I think each presents something compelling about the character. Even if she’s as much defined by her style and mannerisms, I think they convey that sense of outsiderness that I find personally endearing. She doesn’t have the forthrightness of the male detectives, and that speaks to more about her besides gender. It’s a way of thinking, of experiencing the world differently. She could give in to the oppression and die, but she chooses to fight for something greater, and that is rather encouraging.
Even if Salander is not autistic, I definitely think there’s something to be said about what she represents. Maybe she exists somewhat as a trope, but Larsson’s writing makes her more three-dimensional. Whatever it may be, I find the first book to be an especially electric read that conveys the character very well, establishing a universe that would only spin into one of the oddest franchises of the 21st century. Who knows where Larsson would’ve taken her had he lived. Would the series have eventually grown stale and repetitive under his watch? Given that he was continuing to expand her story in fascinating ways, I’m sure he would’ve found a way to make it better than what we eventually got.
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