Fantasy Dependence in David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly
M. Butterfly, as its title suggests, is the reworking of Puccini’s opera, Madama Butterfly. In Puccini’s opera, Lieutenant Pinkerton, a United Sates Navy officer, purchases the conjugal rights to Cio-Cio-San, a fifteen-yrear-old Japanese Geisha
girl, for one hundred yen, and marries her with the convenient provision that each
contract can be annulled on a monthly notice. Meanwhile, Pinkerton leaves Cio-Cio-San for the United States to marry an American girl, Kate. During his absence, Cio-Cio-San has born him a son, and has been waiting for his return, unaware of his marriage in America. After three years have passed since Pinkerton left her, Cio-Cio-San is visited by Pinkerton’s wife, who attempts to claim his son and take him to the United Sates. Realizing that Pinkerton has abandoned her, Cio-Cio-San commits hara-kiri, saying: “Death with honor is better than life/life with dishonor.” At the end of the opera, Pinkerton arrives only to find Cio-Cio-San dead on the tatami floor.
In the Western world, Butterfly represents a stereotype of the Oriental woman. The stereotype of an obedient, submissive, and domestic Asian woman appeals to Westerners through other media beside the opera; for example, the “mail-order bride trade” catalogues and TV spots. The story of the white devil Pinkerton and a sub-missive Asian girl Cio-Cio-San has become a cultural myth in Western world. In M. Butterfly, David Henry Hwang parodies and deconstructs this myth. In his play, a French diplomat Rene Gallimard fantasizes that he is Pinkerton and his Chinese lover Song is his Butterfly. However, as Hwang says in the “Afterword” of the play, Gallimard “realizes that it is he who has been But...
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...tends as the
final impression of the play” (61).
Works Cited
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