One of the novel’s prominent themes is violence against women and its ubiquity and normalization in society. Larsson does not leave this theme up to interpretation, establishing it immediately with the book’s original title: Män som hatar kvinnor, or Men Who Hate Women. Additionally, an epigraph accompanies each of the novel’s four parts and provides a statistic on the percentage of Swedish women who have been threatened or assaulted by men and the high number of unreported cases. Larsson thereby roots the different types of violence against women in his narrative–sexual violence, domestic abuse, assault, murder, and institutional violence in fields like medicine, psychiatry, and law–in the real world.

In addition to the central plot of Gottfried’s and Martin’s serial killings of women, the novel delves into the violent histories of the men abusing Harriet, Cecilia, and Salander. Armansky’s private investigation cases often involve women seeking protection from former partners, and Salander grows up not knowing a single woman who has not experienced sexual assault. She assesses that “this was the natural order of things” (249), and her comment ties directly to the ways society normalizes misogyny and the violence that it fuels.

Salander is quick to categorize the perpetrators of violence against women as misogynists.