Edward Barsegyan

English 102

Professor Batty

Turning a Blind Eye

David Henry Hwangs M. Butterfly is based off an opera from Giacomo Puccini called

Madame Butterfly. Puccini displays a obedient and modest oriental woman who is totally

submissive to and finally dies for her unworthy western lover. The opera has perpetuated the

stereotype of an ideal oriental woman. In Hwangs M. Butterfly, the stereotype of the ideal

oriental woman is subverted as the gender roles and the power structure of the oriental woman

and the western man have been reversed.

The idea of the perfect oriental woman to a western man is one who is modest and

submissive and only focuses on her love for her whole life even changing their life to match

theirs. In Madama Butterfly, Puccini portrays Cio-Cio San as the submissive oriental woman

who is treated poorly and unfairly by her husband, Pinkerton. An article by Samira Sasini states

The heroine of the opera, Cio-Cio-San also known as Butterfly, is deceived by a western bad-

looking man, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton of the U. S. Navy(Sasini 1). Cio-Cio San being the

oriental woman is submissive to her lover who ignores her and only uses her for his own gain.

In the play, Cio-Cio San is being taken advantage of and mentally tortured by her husband which

eventually drove her to suicide.

In Hwangs M. Butterfly, the perfect oriental woman is reversed as Gallimards woman

is actually a chinese spy named Song masquerading as a woman to collect information. Song was

able to skillfully trick Gallimard to believing he was an oriental woman with his knowledge of

the western man. An article by Songfeng Wen states The success of Songs masquerade in the
play is largely attributable to the overwhelming power of the stereotype and the Westerners

attitude toward the Asians. Brainwashed into believing in the Butterfly myth, Gallimard can be

cheated easily by Song, or to be more specific, by his own cultural and gender delusions(Wen

3). To western men, an eastern oriental woman is viewed as a submissive woman who wont

punch back. Song was able to exploit this weakness to trick Gallimard. What Songfeng is stating

is that the feeling of power that western men think they have over eastern women, thinking of

them as submissive is the western mans true downfall.

In orientalism, the western man is full of ambition and in search for an oriental to serve

them as a wife and partner for the rest of the their life. The ambition and the sense of superiority

Gallimard poses is the main reason for his downfall. Another quote by Songfeng Wen states In

Puccinis version, it is stereotyped that the White man is more powerful and the Eastern woman

is docile, submissive to the White man just like the East is colonized by the more powerful

Western countries. The Oriental woman is destined to be dominated by the White man and to

love him purely and to receive the White mans cruel treatment(Songfeng 3). Songfeng exposes

the oriental idea that oriental women were just mere servants under their husbands. That the

oriental woman must do everything that her husband demands and not fight back when their

husband disciplines them. Throughout the play, Gallimard portrays these traits with his wife

and his vision of false power is what barred him from seeing the truth behind Songs disguise. In

a conversation, Gallimard attempts to make a move on Song:

Gallimard. He starts to kiss her roughly. She resists slightly

Song. No no gently please, Ive never
Gallimard. No?
.
.
.
Gallimard. Then we will go very, very slowly.
Gallimard. He starts to caress; her gown begins to open
 Song. No let me keep my clothes

Song. Please it all frightens me. Im a modest Chinese girl



Song. Ill do my best to make you happy. Turn off the lights. (40)

In this scene, Gallimard is attempting to make a move on Song such as a western man would do

on his lover despite her saying no. In the same scene, Song is able to exploit Gallimards western

ambitions by being modest and timid to keep himself from being found by trying to turn down

Gallimards advances and turning off the lights.

When Gallimard finally figured out that Song was a man, he wasnt able to handle the

truth and pretended to not notice it. With that action, his ego was breaking, his ambition was

barring him from accepting the truth behind Song. An article by Michelle Ballaeve states

Gallimard says that he was afraid to find out Song's sexual identity because it would mean that

he was even further away from being a "real" man. In other words, real men don't love other

men, or, rather, in this heterosexist matrix, a man loving another man is not a "real" man. Real

men are defined by loving women(Ballaeve 2). What Ballaeve is stating is that when Gallimard

found out that Song was actually a man, he refused to believe it was true because of his

unhealthy ambition and false power he thinks he has. When Gallimard finally comes to terms

with the truth he realizes all along that he was the butterfly being pushed away by his partner, not

Song.

In Madama Butterfly, Pinkerton was the western man and Cio-Cio San was the butterfly;

in M. Butterfly, the roles are reversed once Gallimard found out Song is a man. When Gallimard

finds out about Song, he realized that he was the butterfly all along and that Song was the man.

Another quote by Songfeng states Song, the man masquerading woman, is falsely believed by
Gallimard to be his Butterfly, the docile one who is supposed receives cruel treatment from the

White lover. Gallimard, who calls himself the Butterfly at the end of the play, is actually the one

who is treated cruelly by his lover(Songfeng 3). What Songfeng is trying to say is that when

Song revealed his true self is when the roles were truly reversed.

When Song finally revealed himself, Gallimard was heartbroken as he realized that he

was the one that was being treated poorly. All this time, Song would cleverly beat around the

bush to Gallimards requests and bar him from true love, such as a western man would do,

donning Gallimard as the poor butterfly. Another quote by Songfeng states In Puccinis story,

the tragic heroine is the ideal Asian woman who dies for the love of a Western man. But in M.

Butterfly, the tragic character is a Frenchman who commits suicide for love of a Chinese

man/woman....It also indicates the gender reversal that Gallimard is going through in the course

of the play. In the play, Butterfly, which is used to refer to the ideal Asian woman, can also refer

to Gallimard, a man in every sense(Songfeng 3 ). Songfeng is stating that at the end it was

Gallimard who became the butterfly like Cio-Cio San, being ignored by their lover and driving

them to suicide. Before stabbing himself, Gallimard dresses like Madame Butterfly to fulfill his

vision of the oriental woman before killing himself. It shows that even though he saw beyond the

veil, he still didnt get over his ambition.

M. Butterfly takes Madame Butterfly and subverts the gender roles and reverses the

power structure between the oriental man and woman. Song may be a man, but he portrays the

oriental woman with Gallimard, the western man who failed to see past his ruse because of his

western ambition. This role reversal is important as throughout the whole play Gallimard

thought that he had finally achieved the dream of a western man, to meet the perfect oriental

woman to call her his own butterfly, but all for not as in the end, he was the butterfly.
 Works Cited

Balaev, Michelle. "Performing gender and fictions of the nation in David Hwang's M.

Butterfly." Forum for World Literature Studies, vol. 6, no. 4, 2014, p. 608+. Literature Resource

Center,
library.lavc.edu:2077/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=lavc_main&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA39

8253065&asid=ebdf8f8082539f38923eb88d90977faa. Accessed 7 Oct. 2017.

Sasani, Samira. "The colonized (the other) and the colonizer's response to the colonial

desire of 'becoming almost the same but not quite the same' in M. Butterfly." Journal of

Language Teaching and Research, vol. 6, no. 2, 2015, p. 435+. Academic OneFile,

library.lavc.edu:2077/ps/i.do?p=AONE&sw=w&u=lavc_main&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA46

1852199&sid=ebsco&asid=2f0009b49d2c727a76cd4343156748df. Accessed 7 Oct. 2017.

Songfeng, Wen. The Subversion of the Oriental Stereotype in M. Butterfly. Cite Seerx,

Canadian Center of Science and Education, 26 Apr. 2013,

citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.838.6330&rep=rep1&type=pdf.

M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang

Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini