Abuse or Be Abused: Traumatic Memory, Sex Inequality, and Millennium as a Socio-Literary Device

Abstract

This article applies the research of French psychiatrist Muriel Salmona to literary analysis of Stieg Larsson’s protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, in the Millennium trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 2008; The Girl Who Played with Fire, 2009; The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, 2010). It suggests that Larsson’s novels may be useful in raising awareness of childhood sexual abuse, through reading neglected signs linked to the neurology of traumatic memory. In the tradition of Nordic noir novels, hyperboles in Salander’s sensationalized identity serve to magnify and bring to light a misunderstood social problem. The article draws mainly on Salmona’s book, Le Livre Noir Violences Sexuelles (2013) which has been influential in France but has not yet reached the rest of the world. The ground-breaking implications of Salmona’s work explaining traumatic memory and linking it to sex inequality are explored and used for literary analysis. This socio-literary approach treats literature as a laboratory for better understanding real-life problems. In this case, it is akin to the rising trend of narrative medicine including in literary criticism, particularly, critical discourse analysis. Salmona’s theories and Larsson’s fictional character share many features, suggesting Larsson, like many writers, was ahead of his time. Not bound by scientific constraints, novelists can forge ahead with how they perceive the current world, shaping it in turn through raising awareness in readers.