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Chapter 19
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
There’s another train heading from Paris to Dresden that leaves only three hours after Einar’s, and Greta buys a ticket on it, intent on following her husband to Germany. She worries about him—about Lili—being there alone. But while packing her bags, she stops herself. Einar asked her, plainly and specifically, not to come.
The closer Einar gets to completing his transition into Lili, the more the book focuses on Greta. Her emotional experience has always been foregrounded compared to Einar’s. It’s what the book uses to generate the internal conflict and drama in the story. The book has been criticized for this approach because it means filtering the story of a transgender pioneer through the lens of a cisgender heterosexual woman. The book uses this chapter to cultivate empathy for Greta by showing the sacrifices that she chooses to make for Lili’s—and Einar’s—sake. And it shows how deeply she loves Einar (and Lili). Without that love her support would not be possible.
Active
Themes
Greta feels old. She notices the lines gathering in her face and the gray hairs appearing on her head. She feels her girlhood slipping away, as if an earthquake had sliced California from the continent of North America and it was, at this very moment, drifting into the Pacific, farther and farther from her. Only Carlisle keeps her connected to her past and to herself. They disagreed about whether Einar should go to Dr. Buson or Professor Bolk, and what Greta perceives as Carlisle’s criticism rankles her.
The book implicitly positions Einar’s transition into Lili as a loss and a sacrifice for Greta, a potentially problematic framing. However, even as it does so, it reminds readers that, while Greta’s situation is in many ways extraordinary, loss and grief are common to humanity. Getting old, undergoing personal transformations that can be good but also painful, arguing with loved ones, and not knowing the best thing to do in all situations are the common plight of being alive.
Active
Themes
Literary Devices
With Einar gone, Greta has no one to talk to except Edvard IV—and Hans. One day, when he comes by to collect some of Greta’s paintings, he tells her that he knows all about Lili. Einar told him the previous autumn. He says it explains a lot, and he's impressed with the strength Greta showed in keeping Einar’s secret. As Greta frets that she hasn’t done right thing, Hans folds her into an embrace. She likes being in Hans’s arms and doesn’t want him to let go—but then they hear Carlisle’s key in the door.
Active
Themes
