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Chapter 15
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Danish Girl, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Gender Transitioning
Self-Transformation
Freedom and Constraint
Love and Acceptance
Courage
Loss and Grief
Summary
Analysis
Carlisle’s bad leg bothers him, especially in the Parisian summer heat. Carlisle is an architect, and he spends most of his time designing bungalows for the new, middle-class neighborhoods springing up around Pasadena. He tells Greta there have been girls in his life but that he’s not ready to settle down yet.
Carlisle and Greta came from old money in America, but Carlisle now spends his time designing the homes for new generations of people making new lives for themselves as part of the growing middle class. The book positions him—like Greta and Lili—at the forefront of the social changes of the 20th century.
Active
Themes
Einar is so shy around Carlisle that Greta begins to wonder if they had an argument, but he only time they’re alone together is when Carlisle invites Einar to join him at the Turkish bath. Einar is scandalized when he realizes that he’s expected to bathe naked.
Readers—and Greta—know why the Turkish bath horrified and embarrassed Einar. It came too close to his unspoken (and socially unacceptable) sexual desires. He’s embarrassed and shy. Yet Carlisle, like Hans and Greta, willingly accepts Einar as he is.
Active
Themes
One day during Carlisle’s visit, Hans drops by the apartment to pick up Greta’s latest work. The paint is still wet on one of them because Einar, who has been helping with the backgrounds, wasn’t familiar enough with camellia flowers to complete the tree under which Lili is standing. Greta worked through the night to finish the painting. Hans likes its “Oriental” flair and he suggests Greta paint Lili in a kimono. Both she and Einar immediately say, “no.”
Active
Themes
Having Hans, Carlisle, and Einar—three men who all want such different things from her—together in the same room makes Greta anxious, and she’s glad to leave her apartment to visit Anna Fonsmark, who is in Paris and wants to introduce Greta to Professor Alfred Bolk, a physician she thinks can help Einar—and Lili.
Active
Themes
Literary Devices
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Greta worries about Professor Bolk, afraid he will be just another Dr. Hexler, but she reconsiders when he assures her that Einar is not insane. In fact, Professor Bolk has seen similar cases. He was even once prepared to operate on a German tram conductor who was living half his time as a man and the other half as a woman named Sieglinde. After Siglinde came to the Clinic begging for his help, Professor Bolk offered to try surgical procedures that would give her female genitalia and appearance. But she couldn’t bring herself to go through with it, claiming that the surgery required her to “sacrifice somebody.” The idea that Einar could choose hadn’t occurred to Greta. Anna was right. Professor Bolk is no Dr. Hexler. Greta trusts him, feels certain that he sees things as clearly as she does. And in that moment, she knows that she and Lili must go to Dresden.
