Abstract
The Danish Girl, a novel written by American author
David Ebershoff, was initially published in 2000 and adapted into an awarding
film in 2015 starring Academy Award-winners Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander.
The Danish Girl is loosely inspired by the true story of the painter Einar
Magnus Andreas Wegener who wrote a partial autobiography, Man Into Woman in
1933, which focuses on his transition to becoming the first person to receive
the gender affirmation surgery. In 2017, The Danish Girl was named by the New
York Times "one of the 25 books that have shaped LGBTQ Literature in the
past twenty years" (Ebershoff, "Bio"). This novel has shaped LGBTQ Literature
because it gives an identity to the first person that went through a gender
affirmation surgery in the 1930s before it was previously thought that
Christine Jorgensen was the first person to receive said surgery in 1952. The
Danish Girl tells the story of Einar Wegener and his wife, Greta, a girl from
Pasadena, California, and the journey of Einar discovering that he longs to
become a woman, first sparked by being asked by his wife to pose for her in
women's stockings and shoes. David Ebershoff is originally from Pasadena,
California and uses his extensive knowledge of the Pasadena area to give the
character of Greta Wegener a background story founded in America. The real-life
wife of Einar, Gerda Wegener, was not from the United States at all; however,
she was a woman born and raised in Denmark, where she met Einar Wegener, her
then painting professor.
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