The Danish Girl

Inspired by a real historical case, the novel follows the intertwined lives of Einar Wegener, a Danish landscape painter, and his American-born wife, Greta, as Einar discovers a female identity named Lili and pursues one of history's earliest gender-affirming surgeries.

In Copenhagen in 1925, Einar and Greta share an attic studio in the Widow House, a government-built residence for fishermen's widows near the harbor. When Anna Fonsmark, a mezzo-soprano sitting for a portrait, cancels her appointment, Greta asks Einar to model Anna's stockings and shoes so she can finish painting. Einar hesitates but complies. Greta then coaxes him into Anna's white dress. As the silk settles over his skin, a dreamlike sensation overtakes him. When Anna arrives and both women laugh, Greta says, in a soft, unfamiliar voice, that they should call him Lili.

Extended flashbacks fill in both characters' histories. Greta is a Waud, granddaughter of a California land-grant millionaire. She has a twin brother, Carlisle, whom she accidentally injured as a child, leaving him permanently lame. The family moved to Denmark when Greta was ten. At the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 1914, seventeen-year-old Greta met Einar, already a painting lecturer, and kissed him on the academy stairs. When war broke out, her father sent the family back to California, where Greta married Teddy Cross, a ceramicist. They had a stillborn baby boy. Teddy later developed tuberculosis and died in a sanitarium. Widowed, Greta eventually returned to Copenhagen, reunited with Einar, and married him.

Einar's childhood on the Bluetooth bog, a waterlogged village in Jutland, shaped him profoundly. His mother died giving birth to him. His sickly, bedridden father caught seven-year-old Einar wearing his dead mother's amber beads and struck him. Einar's closest friend was Hans, the baron's son, a confident boy who advised Einar to keep his dreams private. One summer, Hans tied an apron around Einar's waist and whispered, "Let's pretend" (32). Einar's father caught them and punched Einar. Hans fled Bluetooth and eventually settled in Paris as an art dealer.

After the episode with Anna's dress, Lili begins appearing on her own, sitting quietly in dresses and leaving notes for Greta. In June, Greta takes Lili to the Artists Ball, introducing her as Einar's cousin from Bluetooth. Lili meets Henrik Sandahl, a young painter, who kisses her in a back garden, but a sudden nosebleed cuts the evening short. Over the following weeks, Lili secretly meets Henrik until one evening he seems to glimpse something about her true nature. Terrified, Lili breaks off the relationship.

Greta's painting career shifts. Her portraits of Lili, rendered in bright pastels, begin selling. A Parisian art journal praises her work, notably omitting Einar's name from a survey of Danish art. During a summer holiday in Menton on the French Riviera, Greta arranges for Lili to meet Hans Axgil, Einar's childhood friend, over dinner. Hans does not recognize Einar in Lili, and the two form a warm friendship. But Lili grows increasingly weak, and one afternoon a bloodstain blooms across the front of her dress.

Back in Copenhagen, Einar bleeds intermittently. Greta sends him to Dr. Hexler at a radium institute, who subjects Einar to X-ray treatment, finds nothing wrong, and diagnoses him as mentally unwell. Hexler urges Greta to destroy Lili's clothes. When Hexler threatens to report Einar, Greta conceals the threat and tells Einar that Hans has suggested they move to Paris.

Part Two opens in Paris in 1929. Einar has stopped painting. Lili swims at a ladies-only pool, her body softening. Einar secretly visits a peep-show establishment to study female anatomy. Despairing, he gives himself one year: if Lili and Einar are not resolved, he will kill himself with Greta's pistol. Meanwhile, Greta works intensely, and Hans, now her art dealer, sells her paintings while suppressing his feelings for her.

Greta independently locates Professor Alfred Bolk, a surgeon who runs a women's clinic in Dresden. Bolk tells her about a previous patient who was both male and female and says he could help Einar through a series of surgeries. Carlisle, Greta's twin, arrives in Paris, having deduced from her letters that Lili exists. He drives Einar to see multiple doctors: one diagnoses homosexuality, another suspects schizophrenia, and a third proposes a lobotomy. Meanwhile, Einar reads medical texts on hermaphroditism at the Bibliothèque Nationale and becomes convinced that underdeveloped female organs are buried inside his body. Greta insists on Bolk's approach; they agree the choice is Einar's.

In January 1930, Einar boards a train to Dresden alone, telling Greta he would be too ashamed if she were present. At the Municipal Women's Clinic, he enters as Lili. When asked for a surname, she looks out at the river and spontaneously chooses "Elbe." Professor Bolk removes Einar's testicles. Lili wakes three days later, confused, asking herself, "Where is Einar?" (199).

Greta travels to Dresden despite Einar's wishes. Bolk reveals that during surgery he found rudimentary, underdeveloped ovaries inside Einar's body. He performs a second operation, grafting healthy ovarian tissue over Lili's. The recovery is agonizing: weeks of pain, morphine, and sandbags holding Lili's legs down against spasms. Slowly, she improves. Bolk tells her one more surgery is needed, and Lili says simply, "Do it now" (220).

Part Four opens in Copenhagen in 1931. The king grants a swift divorce. Lili takes a job selling perfume at Fonnesbech's department store and earns a top-salesgirl pin. Greta's painting falters; her Lili portraits come out misconceived. Lili secretly reunites with Henrik, now scarred from a car accident, and he proposes marriage the night before sailing to New York. Lili accepts but says she must first return to Dresden: Professor Bolk has promised to attempt a uterine transplant to make her capable of bearing children. Greta objects fiercely, calling it a mistake, and refuses to accompany her.

Carlisle goes with Lili instead. Before departing, Greta brings out Einar's rolled-up paintings, dozens of dark bog scenes. Lili studies them with distant recognition but says she cannot take them. At the ferry dock, Greta and Lili say goodbye, holding hands. Hans proposes that he and Greta travel to California together. They drive to Bluetooth, where Greta sees Einar's father's grave and Hans says of the boy he once knew: "A little boy with a secret. That's all" (258). Greta and Hans sail for Pasadena, where they plan to marry in her family's garden.

In Dresden, the uterine transplant fails. Lili drifts in and out of consciousness for six weeks, hemorrhaging and in severe pain. Carlisle sleeps in the chair at her bedside each night. Anna arrives for opera performances and helps care for Lili. One Sunday, Carlisle and Anna sneak Lili out in her wheelchair, hauling her up all 41 steps of the Brühlsche Terrace overlooking the Elbe. Alone on the terrace, Lili watches four boys across the river flying a white kite. Its string snaps. The kite sails free, rising and dipping over the water, crossing the river toward her. The novel ends on this image, the freed kite coming for Lili, suggesting that she will die from the complications of her final surgery.