M Butterfly

David Henry Hwang wrote M. Butterfly as an ode to Giacomo Puccini’s’ Madame Butterfly, and inspired by the events in 1988 between French diplomat Bernard Boursicot and Shi Pei Pu a male opera singer during the height of the Chinese Cultural revolution (1949-1979 A.D.). Hwang’s version of Madame Butterfly reflects his opinion on this affair between this diplomat and his lover the opera singer, who the diplomat adamantly believed to be a woman. Likewise, this play twists the original opera, and plays upon the harder hitting questions of race particularly western and eastern opinions on passivism and dominance, sexuality such as the idea of homosexuality, and gender particularly gender role reversals which take the protagonist Renee Gallimard who here parallels Boursicot. Like many works of literature, authors provide as much necessary detail to convey a theme, which through the language of the story it echoes to give off a centralized idea. Even during seemingly unnecessary events within the story, the message still caries take for instant the events in M. Butterfly during act two scene six.. During a party at the Austrian Embassies, Gallimard attempts to seduce one of the Danish ambassadors’ daughter, who is spending her time in China to learn Chinese. This particular scene here only seems to serve as a break from the already extramarital affair Mr. Gallimard is having with this wife to pursue another.
That is the thing, at first glance, we get the impression that this brief relationship of less than one scene that provides a small change in the play but it subtly plays upon some of the themes that become relevant throughout the story. One of which is the dominant male and submissive female roles that particularly Gallim...

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...nds up subjugating themselves.
Ultimately, even Renee played a valuable role in driving a message Mr. Hwang hypothesized about when producing M. Butterfly. Subtly through an appearance of only five pages, less than a full act, she was able to capture many of the ideas of Hwang hypothesized about Boursicot and during Hwang’s production of the play. Although this is a broader idea in literature, that the words, characters, and even scenery all play a vital role in driving the theme of the story. That a good story which in many ways is an extension of a good author does not squander words. Moreover, Renee she was able to capture the ideas of gender—roles including their reversals, racial stereotyping, and some socio-political ideas that not only Gallimard in this story dealt with, but in a realistic and global way during the Indochinese wars, in the late forties.