The themes of sexual exploitation, violence, self-abasement, and resentment, have also been noted, and some critics have compared elements of the song to the works of Bessie Smith and Janis Joplin.

"Violet" peaked at number 29 on the Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks after the album's release in 1994, and is considered one of Hole's most well-known and critically recognized songs.

[5] The cover artwork for the single features a Victorian mourning portrait of a deceased young girl which was acquired from the historical archives of Stanley Burns.

Courtney Love began writing "Violet" in mid-1991, during a Hole tour before the release of the band's debut album, Pretty on the Inside; "Violet" lyrics appear on a flyer designed by Love to advertise a show at Jabberjaw, a rock club in Los Angeles, on August 7, 1991;[7] she stated that she partly wrote the song at Jabberjaw.

[12] In October 1993, the band recorded the album version of the song as part of the Live Through This sessions at Triclops Studios in Atlanta, Georgia.

On both Live Through This and the individual single, the songwriting is credited collectively to Hole, however according to BMI's website, "Violet" was written only by Eric Erlandson and Love.

[16] Scholar Carol Siegel compared "Violet" to Janis Joplin's "Piece of My Heart" as a "popular song styling of female sexuality at different points in white women's emancipation.

"[17] Commenting on the song's lyrical content, she writes that "Love's body becomes the battleground upon which she meets and defeats males who would possess her.

[25] Rolling Stone said of it: "With its daydream whispers and startling gunshot-guitar chorus, "Violet" shakes, rattles and roars like a godless marriage of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way.

""[26] The song was placed in a 2010 NME article titled Hole's 10 Finest Moments, where it was referred to as "the quintessential Hole track" and a "titanic temper tantrum and exhilarating rush of inconsolable rage at full vent... "Go on, take everything, take everything I want you to", she bellows, turning powerlessness into power over riffs that swing from sweet and melancholy to boiling and volcanic on a dime.

[27] Writer Barbara O'Dair summarized the video as consisting of "innocent girls in tutus juxtaposed with naughty, fleshy sex-club dancers.

[30] Many of the scenes in the video aesthetically mimic early-20th century silent films and talkies, with faux-aged cinematography and lapses in audio and visual synchronization.

In a 1995 interview during the KROQ Weenie Roast, Auf der Maur commented on the music video's themes, citing "pornography versus ballet, strippers, and beautiful out-of-synch artwork".