Summary And Analysis Of "The Danish Girl" Directed By Tom Hooper

The Danish Girl, directed by Tom Hooper, portrays the life of a painter Einar Wegener and his wife Gerda during his transition from a man to a woman. Einar’s first encounter with his female counterpart is shown when his wife asks him to be her model for a painting she is working on. She makes him wear stockings and shoes that don't quite fit. She then asks him to put on the dress to make a more accurate image of the way the hem falls over the legs. Einar is then overcome with emotion while he fondles the dress and presses it up against his body. The original model, Ulla, a dancer and friends with the couple walks in and wakes Einar from his moment of joy. She jokingly names this new version of him Lili. This wouldn't be the last time we saw Lili either. Gerda was invited to a party hosted by Ulla, but refused to go because she knew Einar would not want to go. Gerda convinced Einar to go, but not until she told him he could go as someone else. He could go as someone other than himself, someone that was not Einar. He would go to the party as Lili. Einar would then learn how to become more feminine by watching his wife and other women.

When the day came Einar was hesitant to enter the party because he thought he wouldn’t be as pretty as his wife. But with some words of encouragement from Gerda he entered and was greeted by Ulla. Lili needed no introduction because Ulla knew exactly who it was. Lili would then be approached by a man by the name of Henrik. Lili was at first shy and distant, but finally say down with Henrik and they kissed. Gerda looking for her husband saw the whole thing and looked very surprised and confused. At this point Gerda is starting to feel as if Einar is taking this little costume too seriously, but Einar knows that Lili is the real him. Worried for him Gerda asks him to see a doctor. Einar finds no help from speaking with these doctors and is almost thrown into an asylum by one, but he narrowly escapes through a window. Gerda starts feeling like she's losing her husband. She feels like she is living with a new person. She understands that Einar is not the same person and supports him though this crisis that he is in. An old friend refers a doctor that might help Einar in his time of need. Professor Warnekros explains to Einar that he can perform a set of surgeries that would change Einar into who he really is.

Einar would get the first surgery and recover, but when it came to the second surgery he grew impatient and wanted it done sooner than it should. After the second surgery Einar became ill with a fever. His wife and friend were there to make sure he got over his sickness. Einar asked his wife to take him to the garden of the hospital where he would die talking to Gerda about a dream he had the night before. His dream was about him as a baby and his mom holding him. He said that his mom looked at him and called him Lili, and he felt like the real him. His life fading away as he took his last breaths. … Einars experience with his gender identity shows us that it has nothing to do with our environment. He always felt like a woman on the inside, and it wasn’t until he posed for Gerda that he fully felt like a woman.

Although someone’s environment can have a big role in how a person acts it cannot change a person's feelings. Your environment cannot change who you are on the inside. How you feel as a human being and how you think is based off of the way your brain works. It's based off of how your brain wants you to feel or think. The brain has the biggest influence over gender identity because it’s wired and mapped out in a specific way. You environment can tell you that you are a male and that you should only find women attractive, but if your brain tells you that you feel more like a female, even though you were not born one, you are going to always have that belief. You are always going to feel like you’re not your true self until you become a woman.… The way you feel and your attitude towards these things are genetic. It’s kind of like how you and your dad might share the same eye color, or how you and your mom have the same nose. It isn’t something you can change, or something you can choose. It’s something that is given to you from your parents, and they couldn’t choose things about them either.

Everyone is born a certain way due to genetics. Just like how some are taller than others, some have light colored hair, or how some are slimmer than others. But some things can be developed from your environment. For example your family might be really bad at being on time. This certainly isn’t something that you can be born with, but constantly seeing your family be late might turn you into someone that is late all the time too. Your family might be religious, but your friends who you hang out with all the time might be against religion. Then can influence you to rebel against your parents beliefs. … Einar wasn’t affected by his environment because in that time period homosexuality was a disease, and transsexuals were not even thought of as being acceptable. The only other factor that could have any effect on him was his brain. Einars brain made me believe he was a female. It made him think that the real him was hidden behind this masquerade of a man. Not only until he was exposed to the real him did he figure out that he wasn’t a man on the inside. It wasn’t until he put on that dress did he realize that he was a woman trapped in a man’s body and he wanted out of it as soon as he could possibly do it.