ver the past six decades, LGBTQ+ identities have become increasingly heard of in film, literature, and modern society. LGBTQ+ representation, while present, is not always positive, almost always tragic, and has been typically used in one of three ways: as queercoded villains for the hypermasculine hero to vanquish with a fainting damsel by his side, as fetishes for straight people, or as a caricature of the queer community, aimed at ridiculing and/or dehumanising LGBTQ+ people and perpetuating sexist and generally queerphobic ideals. In the last decade, however, LGBTQ+ activism has led to a growing demand for accurate representation in media and literature. Focusing on transgender representation in modern texts, the transgender character is often written in an unrealistic manner by a cisgender author and in mainstream film, the transgender character is more often than not played, written and directed by cisgender people. Transgender experiences continue to be used as interesting gimmicks for cisgender actors, filmmakers, writers and artists to profit off of, while simultaneously ignoring actual transgender experiences. One of the most recent examples of this phenomenon is “The Danish Girl”, the story of one of the first known recipients of sex-change surgery, Lili Elbe, which, while the novel and subsequent film reaching a wider audience was a step forward for the transgender community, still featured an inaccurate depiction of transgender people.
Lili Elbe lived from 1880-1931 in Denmark. An autobiography titled first “Man Into Woman”, then “Lili: A Portrait of the First Sex Change”, was published by a close friend shortly after her untimely death, and included diary entries by her and Gerda Gottlieb, Lili’s ex-wife. As the biography was written originally in Danish and subsequently German, it was translated and published in English in 1933. In the year 2000, David Ebershoff debuted with “The Danish Girl”, based on Lili Elbe’s biography but with a heavy focus on Gerda, Lili’s ex-wife. Finally, in 2015, Tom Hooper directed “The Danish Girl” starring Eddie Redmayne as Lili Elbe and Alicia Vikander as Gerda Gottlieb, a biopic with screenplay by Lucinda Coxon, based on Ebershoff’s novel which was marketed as telling the story of the first transgender sex change and loosely inspired by the story of Lili Elbe.
This essay aims to study the way in which the original story of Lili Elbe in “Lili: A Portrait of the First Sex Change” has been interpreted in Ebershoff’s novel and Coxon’s screenplay, how audiences understand and interpret these narratives, and therefore how trans women are represented by these texts in modern society, particularly by the film, which grossed a total of 64.2 million USD worldwide (Box Office Mojo, April 2016).
The English translation of Lili Elbe’s autobiography begins with a foreword by Helen Parker, who appears to be a transgender woman herself, in which she gives personal context to the reader in order to help a likely cisgender reader understand Lili’s story, and states that “by understanding (transgender people) you will be helping us”. Following this, the sexologist Norman Haire provides context regarding intersex individuals such as Lili. Finally, Niels Hoyer, editor and friend to the ex-couple, provides background to Lili Elbe herself, and introduces the reader to the story before it begins. In keeping with the autobiography, Lili will be referred to as Einar with male pronouns when discussing pre-transition events, and as Lili with correct pronouns when discussing post-transition events. In this essay, reference may be made to gender dysphoria, and its opposite, gender euphoria. Gender dysphoria is the state of being uncomfortable or distressed when one’s physical appearance does not correspond to their gender identity, and gender euphoria is the absence of such a feeling.
The reader’s first introduction to Lili is as Einar, or Andreas, as Lili requested to have her old self be referred to to preserve anonymity, in the year 1930, the middle of Einar’s growing struggles with his identity in conflict with Lili’s, as he believed that he and Lili were separate entities fighting for dominance in a body that was only designed to hold one of the two warring spirits because Lili wanted “to have an existence of her own”. The way in which Einar and Lili’s struggle was viewed by the doctors of the time seems to have corresponded largely to the way society in general would have reacted; “most people would probably have agreed with this third specialist (that (Einar) was “perfectly crazy”): for (Einar) believed that in reality he was not a man, but a woman”.
The autobiography then goes on to mention Einar’s decision to end his existence, and describes suicide in the transgender context in relation to internal and societal gender dysphoria, stating that “(Einar’s) ultimate hope was to die in order that Lili might awaken to a new life”. In addition, the impacts of societal gender dysphoria are very obvious in Einar’s behaviour, as he admits that his only wish upon meeting Professor Warnekros, the woman’s doctor whose diagnosis was purported to be of great importance to Einar and Lili, was that “(Professor Warnekros) would not regard (Einar and Lili) as a sorry renegade … because … (Lili) would rather be a woman than a man”. Einar also refers to his life as “a wretched comedy as a man”, and describes reassignment surgery as being imperative to survival. Once the surgeon confirms that he can help Lili, Lili and Einar both begin to seem far more at ease, and Lili begins to ease into taking over the majority of Einar’s previous existence. Lili’s gender euphoria is evident in her high spirits whenever those around her, whether wittingly or not, affirm her identity as an admittedly hyper-feminine woman, and “ill humour”, most likely gender dysphoria, possessed Einar when Lili was unable to ‘take over’. The autobiography frequently discusses the realities of suicide in transgender people with regards to gender dysphoria, and reflects the experiences of many modern transgender individuals.
After her societal transition, Lili still experiences internal gender dysphoria, as she “thinks the Professor sees her as nothing but a female impersonator, that is to say, (Einar)”, and this “melancholy” deepens when letters addressed to Einar arrive in the mail. Lili is also described as wanting to leave Einar behind, and wanting peace from Einar’s past. The fourteen months she spent as her true self were about finding herself and relishing in her individuality, and as she wrote, just before the operation that would ultimately prove fatal, “that I, Lili, am vital and have a right to life I have proved by living for fourteen months. It may be said that fourteen months is not much, but they seem to me like a whole and happy human life.” Following her reassignment surgery, her gender euphoria and the focus on the affirmation of her femininity comes almost entirely, apart from the Professor and her fiance, Claude Lejeune, from the women around her, as well as everyday instances of being addressed as ‘madam’, and little statements of femininity, buying lipstick, silk stockings, etc all reflect very closely the experiences of modern transgender women.
David Ebershoff’s version of the story begins far differently with the claim that “his wife knew first”. Ebershoff then describes the pivotal moment in Einar’s life as feeling “as if (Gerda) had caught him doing something he had promised he would avoid”, sexualising and prolonging the experience, mentioning “the garish lump in his groin”, and a sailor downstairs who says “you’re a whore … you’re one hell of a beautiful whore” to some unknown person, but who Einar feels is speaking to him. Gerda and Ulla, the couple’s good friend and the model whom Einar was replacing, laugh loudly at Einar, whose eyes “began to roll back into his head, filling with tears”. By thus changing the original account, Ebershoff belittles Einar and Lili, pitting cisgender women against transgender women in a way that reflects parts of the modern transgender discussion.
This theme continues throughout the novel, as does the focus on Gerda as opposed to Einar/Lili; Ebershoff is fixated on making Gerda as typically masculine as possible, describing her as “broad-shouldered” and “the tallest girl in Copenhagen”, while he infantilizes and yet sexualises Einar, describing him as “childlike” and “in some ways even younger than (Gerda)”, alleging that Einar was “without any fat on his body, except for his soft breasts, which were as small as dumplings”, that “Einar, with his bony wrists and his backside small and curved, was practically a child”, and that “his chest … was as obscene as the breast of a girl a few days into puberty”, with an apparent obsession with all things related to genitalia and breasts, though the original accounts barely mentioned them. Ebershoff also compares Einar to Gerda’s ex-husband, emphasizing his apparent masculinity in contrast with Einar for the sole purpose of further feminising Einar. Then, when Einar first actively dresses as Lili, Gerda does not accept it as she does in Elbe’s version, instead hovering in the entryway of their apartment and ultimately excusing herself until Einar ‘returns’. Then, when Gerda asks if Lili will return, Einar responds, “only if you want her to”, which shifts the imperative to Gerda. This places Einar/Lili in a passive role in their transitional journey, establishing instead Gerda as the active entity to whom Einar submits to in decision-making regarding the couple’s relationship. Lili’s ‘transformation’ is almost entirely attributed to Gerda, “Einar Wegener … seemed to be slipping down a tunnel …. yes, thanks were due to Gerda”, when in reality Lili accredited Warnekros with as much if not more importance. In addition, while Elbe’s entries focused very much on fellow women’s view of Lili, one of the first interactions between Lili and a stranger features a man in a distinctly romantic light, and whom Lili “couldn’t believe had noticed her”, in a stark contrast to the original Lili, who was confident and self-assured, a far cry from Ebershoff’s meek, wilting creation. Affirmation for Lili’s identity as a woman comes largely from men, unlike in Elbe’s original accounts, where her validation came almost entirely from her fellow women. By changing this aspect of Elbe’s story, it reinforces both sexist and transmisogynistic viewpoints, supporting the belief that women are only worth as much as a man’s opinion of her, and that a transgender woman is only a ‘true’ woman if she appeals to cisgender men. This shifts the viewer’s reading of Elbe’s story as a female-positive narrative to Ebershoff’s rather misogynistic presentation of the story, which centres the main focus on heterosexual romance as opposed to female friendship.
Even while Lili has control of the body, rather than considering Lili the woman she is, Gerda refers to Lili as her husband with male pronouns, and seems to consider Lili just Einar in women’s clothing, Gerda even thinking outright that “it would crush Einar … were she to admit, aloud at least, that Lili was no more than her husband in a dress” – the very thing that Lili was originally terrified people would think of her as. There is heavy focus on the falsehood of the ‘disguise’; “Gerda … almost forgot … that they weren’t breasts; they were avocado stones wrapped in silk handkerchiefs”, and describes Gerda as “tired, and she wanted Einar to pull off his dress and wipe his lips”, which infers that Gerda was constantly aware of the performative illusion of Lili. Ebershoff also portrays the couple as thinking of Lili as a dirty little secret, something taboo, thrilling when exposed to the outside world because of its taboo nature but also a burden; Einar says at one point that it is “too much to ask every day (that Lili come every day) … I love it. I love her. But it’s hard”, when in reality it was the opposite, and that Einar and Lili were both tired of keeping up the masquerade, not of Lili as Ebershoff presents it, but of Einar. Ebershoff’s Lili is still Einar, despite glib tribute to the separate spirits of Lili’s original account, and Ebershoff’s account dismisses Lili’s identity, referring to Lili as “Einar in the young girl’s dress, flirting with a younger man … it was an awful sight”. In describing the couple’s perspective of Lili in this way, Ebershoff is separating Lili from her fellow women, and reaffirming the concept of transgender women as just being men dressing in women’s clothing.
Having admitted that he is not trying to tell a true story, Ebershoff’s account paints Gerda not as an equal as he claims in his author’s note, but as the heroine of Lili’s journey, consistently asserting her dominance over both Lili and Einar and expanding just as much on Gerda’s backstory as Einar’s, if not more. Arguably the most noticeable example of this was when Gerda visits Professor Warnekros, the doctor who would ultimately operate on Lili, alone and on the behalf of Lili. In changing this part of the original narrative, Ebershoff becomes complicit to the common phenomenon where cisgender women speak for and over transgender women, thus erasing or decreasing the weight of the transgender women’s experiences.
Not every reader shares this view, however; John Burnham Schwartz, writing for the New York Times in 2000, suggests that Ebershoff presents Gerda with nowhere near as much depth as Lili is provided. He proposes that although Gerda tells Lili that they “lived in that small dark space between two people where a marriage exists”, Ebershoff should have expanded on the difficulties between them. In contrast, Richard Bernstein, also for the New York Times in the same year, is quoted as writing “Gerda … is a wonderfully successful character, more so in many ways than Einar”, and that “though the central event of the book is Einar's inexorable transformation into Lili, Mr. Ebershoff's story belongs to Gerda”. Further into Bernstein’s article is proof of how Ebershoff’s portrayal of Lili as a man in woman’s clothing has left an impression on his reader, as Bernstein writes that Gerda’s husband was “dressed up as a girl”, and describing Lili as either “Einar-Lili”, “Gerda’s husband”, and consistently with male pronouns. One sentiment shared by both articles was that Ebershoff’s descriptive, perhaps overtly flowery writing style can overshadow the true focus of the novel, beyond which one is hard pressed to find any opinion, transgender or otherwise, on the influences of Ebershoff’s storytelling on the message of the story.
The biopic tells Lili’s story in a manner that is more similar to the original, though there are many elements that have been incorporated from Ebershoff’s version, most noticeably among them the sexualisation and focus on genitals. The divide between the two main characters is much more equal in Hooper’s reimagining than in Ebershoff’s, though with perhaps a slightly heavier focus on Gerda, as shown when the first shot of a person is a close frame up of Gerda’s face. The following ten minutes or so is devoted to establishing Gerda and Einar’s very stable relationship, the colour in the first half of the film bleak and dreary, and with a lack of prominent warm colours. This changes over the course of the film as Lili begins to find herself, the mise-en-scene becoming more vibrant according to mirror Lili’s increasing freedom (Debruge, 2015).
Coxon writes a scene dedicated to a commentary on male gaze, with Gerda painting a visibly uncomfortable man, whom she reassures, saying that it is very hard for men to “submit to a woman’s gaze”, but that “women are used to (being looked at by men)”. This, however, is soon subverted when Gerda is disrobing for bed and notices Einar looking at her, and when she inquires, he responds, “can’t a woman watch his wife undress?” The following scene, where the couple and Ulla are at a gallery exhibition, also has an undercurrent of focus on the male gaze, when Einar teasingly accuses his wife for “flaunting her ankles” and corrupting him. In the next scene, when the couple are back in their bedroom, Einar sits on the edge of the bed and sits still as Gerda undresses him to reveal that he was wearing one of Gerda’s slips, which brings up the subversion of the male gaze again while still sexualising the experience.
The moment of self-discovery is depicted more closely to the original account, without Ebershoff’s exaggerated, fetishised description, though Hooper shows Lili’s awakening very materially in extreme close-ups of the stockings on Redmayne’s legs, of Redmayne’s fingers delicately tracing the seams of the dress, before Ulla arrives, wearing an outfit that punches colour into the otherwise dull frame, highlighting her importance in the scene. This scene, unlike Ebershoff’s, is not drawn out, ending as soon as Ulla christens Einar’s alter ego ‘Lili’. There is an element of foreshadowing in the following scene, when Gerda remarks that she was “wondering when (Einar) got so pretty”, to which Einar replies that he had “always been pretty, (Gerda) just never noticed”. This launches the couple into experimenting with Einar’s newfound femininity, Einar posing in exaggerated caricatures of femininity for Gerda to sketch as Gerda laughs, telling him “don’t make (Lili) a slut!” Coxon writes a montage depicting the couple’s exploration of Lili as Einar copies the presentation and mannerisms of Gerda and other women around him, in addition to moments of Einar dressing in women’s clothing played for comedic effect. The nature of the montage means that the audience never gets into Einar’s head, merely seeing the performative, surface-level exploration of femininity, which reinforces the notion that transgender people are merely performing gender. This game reaches a climax when Gerda discovers Lili kissing a man she’s met at the artists’ ball, followed by a tense scene the next morning in which an emotional Gerda asserts that the game has gone too far and that they “need to stop”. Einar, despite seeming to accept that it would be “better if Lili didn’t come here again”, leaves the house the next day to explore the physicality of Lili in his body, stripping in front of the mirror in the opera house and rounding his shoulders to approximate breasts, tucking his penis experimentally between his legs to crescendoing flute and strings as Gerda, back in the house, sketches furiously. The focus of Lili’s exploration is, as before, very material, with most of the tension and emotional depth dedicated to Gerda and her frustrated strokes, jump cuts and camera movement contributing to the rising tension in Gerda’s cuts. The scene in the opera house, in contrast, is sedentary and frames itself strangely, the Ebershoff-esque focus on genitalia and sex throughout the film further confining Lili and Einar’s conflict to being merely physical where in reality it was a combination of physical, internal and societal gender dysphoria that afflicted Lili. Another scene, where Lili goes to a seedy part of town to watch a peep show, focuses similarly on the performative, exaggerated form of hyperfemininity that Lili adopts, further alienating her from the audience and potentially separating her from the modern feminist.
Hooper presents the audience with the societal aspect in the scenes where Lili and Einar are attempting to convince the doctors that they are not mad, simply a woman, and bombards the audience with the physical aspect, but neither he nor Redmayne adequately express the internal gender dysphoria that plagued Lili in her memoirs, apart from brief glimpses of how sex affects Einar and Lili, once more orienting the experience around sex when in reality it was much more internalised, described by Elbe as a battle of wills. This view is shared by Roger Ebert, who suggests that Hooper presents Lili as superficial and never allows the audience to understand Lili and her journey while Scott, writing for the New York Times, who points out that Redmayne’s style of acting means that the transition from Einar to Lili is an event that runs only skin deep.