Gender Roles In M. Butterfly

Born in Los Angeles to immigrant Chinese-American parents, David Hwang has the perfect viewpoint of East versus West gender roles. M. Butterfly, largely a story of love and deception with an emphasis on how intertwining relationships can change the course of countries and lives. The focus, though is the different gender roles and the significance of those roles in how the story evolved and ended. In his play M. Butterfly, David Henry Hwang masterfully casts non-traditional gender roles while also pitting the East versus West point of views towards traditional gender roles from an unbiased perspective. The most significant character in the play is Song Liling. This character is portrayed as a submissive Asian woman actress coinciding with Asian

Butterfly character in its many forms is definitely nontraditional in every way. M. Butterfly starts out as an Asian man playing a woman in a “unknown” homosexual relationship with a western male diplomat. Very out of the ordinary circumstances for genders and cultures, although not the last transformation of M. Butterfly. M. Butterfly in court proceedings is revealed to the world as a man and Rene is ridiculed in front of the whole world for not realizing this during a 20-year relationship. Near the end of the play M. Butterfly again transforms and is revealed to be Rene’s imagination and fantasy therefore stating that he is truly M. Butterfly. He cannot deal with the truth and commits suicide, which is frowned upon in the west, but is acceptable in the east in situations of honor and shame. The fact that the M. in M. Butterfly stands for both madame and monsieur at different points in the play shows how flexible David Hwang’s views of gender equality

Rene and the pin up girl shows a common theme of westerners as it pertains to males and western female fantasies. Rene fantasizes about his perfect girl which had stereotypical features of a western woman, yet throughout the whole play he chased an Asian woman. Rene also has a fight with his conscious named Marc who tries to build Rene’s confidence. Rene aspires to be just like Marc who is a typical western ladies’ man and spilling with confidence. Rene showed signs with his power play on Song but he ends up falling short of Marc’s expectations. Marc leaves Rene to his terrible fate and did not seem bothered with giving yet another chance to Rene. Hwang shows the disconnection of fantasy and reality with these characters. In reality a person is limited versus in a fantasy setting possibilities are