Features
Two Outstanding Wives
We have just marked International Women’ Day with rallies, seminars and awards presentations, here and overseas. Coincidentally, in the last two days I watched Netflix films and was totally impressed all over again by the sacrificial commitment of women, and as a by-line, the acceptance of all that womanly giving by the two men concerned. The films seen were ‘The Theory of Everything’ – life of astronomer/physicist Stephen Hawking and ‘The Danish Girl’ about the sex change of pioneer . In both Eddie Redmayne starred as protagonist, but for me the shows were stolen by the wives – Jane Wilde Hawking played by Felicity Jones (British) nominated for Oscar for Best Actress in the film, and Gerda Wegener played stunningly as acknowledged, by Alicia Vikander (Swedish) winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2015, and nominated for BAFTA in the same category, same film.
The true stories
Everyone knows Stephen William Hawking (Jan 8 1942 in Oxford – 14 March 2018 in Cambridge) CH CBE FRS FRSA, British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge at the time of his death.
In the 1960s, Cambridge University student and future physicist Stephen Hawking fell in love with fellow collegian Jane Wilde. At 21, Hawking learns that he has motor neuron disease. Jane marries him in 1965 in spite of his being already semi- handicapped and they have three children. With Jane completely supportive at his side, he begins an ambitious study of time, of which he has very little left, according to his doctor. (However he defiantly lived till age 76!) He and Jane overcame terrible odds and broke new ground in the fields of medicine and science.
The second life is that of Einer Magnus Andreas Wegener (1882- 1931). Born in the small fjord-side town of Vejle, Denmark, he was a precocious young boy. As a teenager, he traveled to Copenhagen to study art at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. He met Gerda Gottlieb and married her in 1904; the couple aged 22 and 19. While he painted landscapes and was acclaimed, she painted portraits and success came to her only when her Lili paintings were exhibited. She was a successful illustrator of fashion magazines.
Once when her model was late in arriving, Gerda got her husband to wear stockings and heels and pose. This nudged his inner ‘self’ and the urge to become a woman. Traveling through Europe the couple settled down in Paris in 1912 and Einar went to two famous surgeons seeking sex transformation. The first attempts failed but under pioneer Dr Warnekros in 1930-31, the operations were successful and thus emerged a beautiful woman who took the name of Lili Elbe, the surname after the river that flows through Dresden where the last sex reassignment was done. Lili lived openly, and officially as a woman for 20 years of her life, first with Gerda and then moving to live with a man. The King of Denmark nullified the marriage in 1930. She considered herself to be a woman and an old friend wanted to marry the new woman. The final operation to implant a uterus caused her to suffer heart paralysis just before her 49th birthday. The diary he/she kept was published as a book ‘Man into Woman’, under a pseudonym in 1933 in Danish and German. It was considered of pioneering help to future transgenders.
The films
The ‘Theory of Everything’ was adapted from the book written by Jane Hawking while ‘The Danish Girl’ was adapted from the biography of the same name written by David Ebershoff in 2000. The film of the former book was directed by James Marsh and Eddie Redmayne won the Academy Award for best actor in a leading role; a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award. Felicity Jones was nominated for her role as Hawking’s first wife. ‘The Danish Girl’ was directed by Tom Hooper who won the director’s Academy for his film ‘The King’s Speech’. Redmayne, though criticized by some for acting a transgender, which role should have been played by an actual one it was said, received nomination for Academy Award for best actor – this unparalleled honour in consecutive years.
The Actor
Edward “Eddie” John David Redmayne (1982 -), the English actor with the superbly malleable face played both Hawking and Einar Wegener/Lili Elbe brilliantly. He was a paralysed physicist with a permanently averted face whose lips and eyes were expressive. His role in the second film was even harder – a sexually active husband turning into a woman and looking so like one. He is the recipient of , including an , a , and and . He began his professional acting career as a youth in before making his screen debut in 1998. He played famed Shakespeare characters on stage. In 2016, he began starring as Newt Scamander in the ‘Fantastic Beasts’ film series authored by J K Rowling. In 2020, Redmayne starred as in ‘’ which was very recently nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Film.
Born on 6 January 1982 in to Patricia Burke who runs a , and Richard Redmayne, a businessman in , he has two siblings and two half siblings. His paternal great-grandfather was Sir (1865-1955), a civil and mining engineer. He attended , the same year as . In 2014 he married Hannah Bagshawe and they have a daughter and son. He was given the honour of Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen’s honour list for services to drama.
Supremacy of two women
I started this article by mentioning a connection between the recently marked International Women’s Day and two films I watched on Netflix. The connection is the superior quality of the two wives in the two real life stories narrated in ‘The Theory of Everything’ and ‘The Polish Girl’; namely Jane Wilde Hawking (1944-) and Gerda Marie Fredrike Gottlieb Wegener (1886-1940).
The first outstanding quality was their dedication to their husbands, the love they showered on the two – handicapped in different ways. Their love turned to sacrificial giving and lasted through two betrayals of sorts. Stephen Hawking falls in love with his nurse after 30 years of marriage and leaves Jane for her. Gerda’s husband showed signs of wanting to dress as a woman and then leaves her to live with a man for the last couple of years when he was accepted as a woman. They went through immense stress, emotional upheaval, physical hardship, especially Jane who cared for her wheelchair-bound husband and three children. Gerda was with her husband through the several sex transforming operations and at the end was of solace and immense comfort when he died in the clinic he was recuperating in.
At first Jane Hawking subsumed her talent, her intellect, her ambition and love of knowledge to support and care for her husband whom she recognized early on to be genius. He was given two years to live, early in their marriage, but in all probability his living to 76 was due to her early care and inspiration and later his will and various interests and intellectualism taking over. Gerda owes her success as a portrait painter for the paintings she did of her husband as a girl – the Lily portraits.
You need to see the two films or read the biographies of these two inspiring women to fully recognize their true greatness through mainly their femininity. Jane Hawking completed her PhD just before her third child was born and continued teaching. She also wrote much besides her story of life with Hawking. When stressed with home duties, her mother suggested she sing in the church choir, she being Christian against Stephen’s atheism. The choir conductor was Jonathan Hellyer Jones who soon became a family friend. In 1997, Jane married him, She is recognized as a writer, speaker and mercifully, is still alive.