Previous
Chapter 26
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
That spring, Henrik prepares to sail for New York, but before he does, he asks Lili to marry him. She accepts, but only after insisting that he listen to her whole story, the story of how she was born from Einar’s life, first. She wants to make sure that if he loves her, he loves who she truly is. And he does, although Lili still finds it surprising that this could be so. She also tells him that, before she joins him in New York, she wants to go back to Dresden. During her transformation, Professor Bolk had proposed a final surgery, a uterine transplant that would potentially allow Lili to have children of her own. Greta was adamantly set against it, and at the time Lili capitulated. But now, she knows that she wants to go through with it.
Heinrik’s love for Lili is moving because it’s what she wanted and because he loves her wholeheartedly, accepting her for who she is as a transgender woman—even in a time when there was a great deal of stigma attached to queer sexuality and intersex conditions like the one Professor Bolk describes Lili having are poorly understood. Love is a powerful motivator for Lili, who decides to go through with Professor Bolk’s final surgery because her idea of womanhood includes the ability to have children of her own with Henrik. She hasn’t so much found the courage to go through with the operation in this moment as found the courage to assert herself with Greta, insisting on forging her own path on her own terms.
Active
Themes
And so, a few weeks later, as she poses for Greta, Lili realizes that the time has come to confess everything. This painting, unlike so many of the others Greta has attempted since they left Paris, is beautiful and has all the hallmarks of Greta’s best work. Lili wants to give it to Henrik as a wedding present. As she paints, Greta tells Lili about the time she painted a portrait of Mrs. Waud. It was long ago, when she was 18 and newly in love with Teddy Cross. For five mornings, she painted her mother, keenly aware of the disapproval on Mrs. Waud’s face. What she didn’t understand then was that it wasn’t entirely personal. Mrs. Waud also had a mother’s concern for a daughter about to “step into something painful.” The portrait still hangs in her mother’s house in Pasadena.
Although in some ways it offers a compelling and moving portrait of Lili as she goes through her transition, the book ultimately ends up portraying her as a deeply selfish person, unwilling or unable to recognize or honor the sacrifices Greta made in order for her to transform and have the life she now does. This isn’t to say she should do what Greta says she should or that she should sacrifice her own happiness and her relationship with Henrik for Greta—it’s also clear that it’s time for Greta to undergo another self-transformation of her own. But Greta implicitly draws a contrast between her mother (who felt concern and empathy for her daughter’s pain) and Lili, who is too scared that Greta will try to interfere in her relationship with Henrik if she confesses.
Active
Themes
Lili tries to confess. But she doesn’t know what to say, and Greta ends up guiding her through the conversation with questions. Lili is in love. With Henrik. They’re getting married in New York. It’s what Lili has always wanted. Greta doesn’t look at Lili as she quietly says that, not so long ago, the two of them were married. She says she’s still trying to get used to the change in their lives.
Active
Themes
Then Lili tells Greta that she’s going to Dresden for the last operation. She wants Greta to go with her, to take care of her while she recovers. Greta thinks it’s a bad idea. She asks Lili to think about it carefully. Just then, the pain that has lingered in Lili’s abdomen since her surgeries flares up. Even all these months later she still must take a pain pill every eight hours to keep it at bay. In her discomfort and rising anxiety, she can’t find her pillbox. Greta ultimately locates the pills in the bottom of the wardrobe and hands them to Lili. But she says that she will not go to Dresden. She thinks it is a mistake, and she will not participate.
Active
Themes
Get the entire The Danish Girl LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
Carlisle volunteers to go with Lili instead, even though he doesn’t fully understand what the operation entails. Greta’s refusal frightens Lili, but she tries to think of it as an adventure, and she imagines how happy her future life with Henrik and their children will be.
Active
Themes
One day while Lili is packing, Greta asks if she wants to take any of Einar’s paintings. Lili knows that Einar painted, but she herself has never had any interest. She cannot even think of what the paintings look like. Greta fetches them, dozens of small, carefully rolled-up canvasses, and starts laying them out on the floor. Lili recognizes the bog at Bluetooth dimly. Greta has never been there, but she feels like she knows the place through Einar’s paintings. Looking at the pictures, Lili experiences one of Einar’s memories, of running through the mud with Hans and tossing things—dishes and an apron with cottongrass strings—into the bog to be swallowed up forever.
Greta recalls how hard Einar used to work, how many hours he would spend at his canvases. Lili asks if Greta can’t sell the paintings. She doesn’t feel attached to them, and she doesn’t think Henrik would like them, either.
Active
Themes
