Genre
Novel
Setting and Context
Copenhagen around the 1930s
Narrator and Point of View
Third Person Narrator with Limited Point of View
Tone and Mood
The tone is that of a sort of “coming of age” novel, in the sense that something changes in Einar when Lili is brought out. The tone and mood change in a cyclical manner, from excitement to desperate, back to hopeful, for instance.
Protagonist and Antagonist
Lili and Greta
Major Conflict
Einar Wegener discovers his true identity as Lili and begins his journey towards transition.
Climax
Lili finally finds a doctor who will perform the gender reassignment surgery.
Foreshadowing
There are flashbacks to Einar’s childhood, revealing he had always liked dressing in women’s clothes.
Understatement
Many of the doctors in the novel believe Einar to be simply insane and believe they can fix him with pseudo-scientific methods.
Allusions
N/A
Imagery
When Lili begins to reject her male body, the descriptions of female bodies become more ethereal and angelic while the male body is described as “shrivelled” with “goose-pimpled thighs”.
Paradox
When Einar visits a peep show, it isn’t to sexually gratify himself, but to learn how to move like a woman.
Parallelism
Lili thought of herself a "formerly a male rat", because she sees herself as continuously running in place like a rat with it's wheel.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
N/A
Personification
N/A
