The Danish Girl

A stunning achievement. A touching psychological journey into the lives of a husband and wife dealing with transgender issues associated with their realization that "he" is a "she." Beautifully written and amazingly atmospheric whether describing the California landscape, Copenhagen or Paris in the 30's.

A stunning achievement. A touching psychological journey into the lives of a husband and wife dealing with transgender issues associated with their realization that "he" is a "she." Beautifully written and amazingly atmospheric whether describing the California landscape, Copenhagen or Paris in the 30's.

Per the author this novel is entirely fiction stemming from the historical records of Lily. I was intrigued with the fact that transgender surgeries began nearly 100 years ago. I was touched by the relationship here. Even if fiction, these two historically did stay together through most of this story. Gerda so loves Lili that she supports and enables Lili in this journey, and in some instances encourages Lili-- as in cross dressing early on. Gerda recognises the needs of her loved one and enables. The love story touched me deeply as I have always felt true love should be just that. Like raising children where you try to teach them about life and yes, love them enough to let them go.

As a child becomes an adult there is a metamorphosis of body shape, hormones, brain patterns, and emotions rage. Many things can influence this metamorphosis like neglect, abuse, starvation to name a few. These influences have been identified, supported, studied, to some extent. Yet, the idea that a man, or woman, may have been born one way on the outside and different way on the inside is still not completely understood, yet when he or she realize ones true self, a true metamorphosis.

This is an excellent film! The casting could not have been more perfect; also true of the acting. The subject matter is thought provoking, and might lead some to have more compassion for those who struggled with these kinds of issues. This is a beautiful film, and I think it also could be shown in a theater known for it art-type movies. Highly recommend.

The synopsis is really misleading... the main character isn't a trans woman, they are a hermaphrodite. This is a rare physical birth defect where the person has reproductive parts of both genders. Einar has so much estrogen in his system to begin with that he doesn't need hormone therapy to develop a female shape.

It's an interesting story over all... man who doesn't know he's a hermaphrodite gradually becoming more and more female in a time period where these things were not well understood... but there were a lot of details that got on my nerves. Greta never once asks her husband to explain why he's dressing as a girl; she just blindly accepts and encourages him. This is not realistic at all for the time period. It's also odd that Greta and Einar treat his female persona like a separate third person who inserted herself in their marriage. I found it unbelievable that nobody on the streets ever once guessed that Lili was Einar dressed up, and that nobody in his adult social life bothered him about it. They all accepted his/her behavior without question, as Greta did. The author has painted us a detrimentally idealist picture that does not suspend disbelief. It would have been more realistic to show some of the discrimination that the real-life Einar no doubt had to overcome. What remained of my suspension of disbelief failed completely when the first straight man Einar dated as Lili fell in love with him/her immediately, and they go on to live happily ever after as a "straight couple." This might be a popular Hollywood trope, but that's what it is-- a trope.

Also, there are many details that make me think the male author doesn't know a single thing about female anatomy or how it works. Einar starts menstruating out of his nose halfway through the book. The author claims in the afterword that the nose menstruation is supposedly accurate to Einar Wegener's personal account of his transition. I'm betting he got bad nosebleeds because he was frail and author took some egregious liberties with it. The author also glossed over a lot of the details of Einar's hermaphroditism so he could paint him as a Trans pioneer who felt so female inside that me magically started to look it on the outside. Which is not how that works either.

I would not recommend this. It's a meh book with far too much idealism and blatantly unrealistic reactions/behavior/scenarios. I wasn't sure if I was reading literary fiction or an offbeat Cinderella story, and I struggled to finish it. I'm pretty sure the shock value of the unusual subject matter is the only reason this was hyped so much.

This book is written so well. I could almost smell the air in each scene. Such a sad and difficult journey for all the characters, especially Einar....but Greta' s life was so wrought with painful experiences too. I loved the acceptance of Lili by all the important people in her life...even during that time period. A strange but quite beautiful story...