By Lei Landicho

The Danish Girl is a story of – not one – but two Danish heroines who found themselves in a situation beyond their control. One (Lili) resided in a falsely assigned body and later made a life-altering decision to break out from it. The other (Gerda) is her wife who, in the most extraordinary circumstance a woman could encounter in her life, supported and stayed beside her husband. The Danish Girl was supposed to be Lili. But it would seem Gerda shares with her the title.  What should have been a harrowing tale of the first person to undergo sex reassignment has become the story of a woman’s unconditional love and irrepressible ache in witnessing and letting her husband disappear and re-emerge as a woman. The Danish Girl, it turns out, is Gerda.

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