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Chapter 3
Themes
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
The story flashes back to 1914, when Mr. Waud forced Greta to return to California. Greta is extremely bored and miserable. She resents Mrs. Waud’s expectation that she resume her girlhood friendships and start looking for an eligible husband. She starts wearing an artist’s smock and carrying the only note Einar wrote to her (a parting letter suggesting she forget him) in one of its pockets. She writes him letters and anxiously awaits his reply.
Greta feels trapped in her life too, in ways not altogether unlike Einar, which suggests why she might be so willing to encourage Lili to express herself. Greta knows how painful it can be to feel constrained. And, as her letters and anxiety prove, her feelings for Einar weren’t just a passing infatuation.
Themes
Eventually, Akiko, one of the Waud family’s housemaids, convinces Greta to attend a meeting of the Pasadena Arts & Crafts Society, where Greta meets a handsome young ceramic artist named Teddy Cross. Teddy is the son of strawberry farmers. He grew up in Bakersfield and has never been outside of California. He listens attentively to Greta’s stories of Denmark, and she falls in love with him for his pleasant demeanor and the beautiful vases he makes. And when Greta unexpectedly receives a letter from Einar suggesting that she forget about him, she decides to pursue her future with Teddy. Despite Mrs. Waud’s objections, she asks him to accompany her to her debutante ball.
However she feels about Einar, Greta is still young and prone to love. Like Einar, Teddy offers her a way to escape the life her mother has planned for her, not only as a working-class person but as an artist. Readers should always remember, however, that Greta’s freedom to create the life she wants is also a privilege born of the familial wealth that she knows will protect her.
Themes
On the night of the debutante ball, Teddy looks extremely handsome in his tuxedo. Eventually, Greta invites him outside and initiates sex. She knows, as soon as it’s over, that she’s set herself on a path that she can’t escape, but at least it leads away from her current life. She’s two months pregnant when she and Teddy marry at the end of February. Mr. Waud and Mrs. Waud buy them a large house in Bakersfield, not far from Teddy’s parents. He is attentive throughout her miserable pregnancy but is not there on the day she delivers their stillborn baby boy.
Themes
Literary Devices
