Stereotypes Of Orientalism In John Luther Long's Madame Butterfly

Madame Butterfly (1898), a story written by John Luther Long, is perhaps one of the highly acclaimed works that has also been performed worldwide as an opera by Giacomo Puccini. It would later become the framework of David Henry Hwang’s 1988 play, M. Butterfly, which explores and reinterprets the stereotypes of Orientalism that are shown in Long’s original work. Both plays reflect the social ideologies of gender and race that have been constructed behind historical contexts of culture and politics. Despite its similarity in the ideologies, Long’s Madame Butterfly propagates the Western stereotypes of Orientalism in its interracial love story, while Hwang’s M. Butterfly skillfully challenges those stereotypes.
The Western ideology of the Eastern exoticism and docility originates from the long historical context of imperialism and political tensions between the West and the East. Domestic struggles caused by political strife and war in the East, such as the Philippines during the American-Spanish War and China during the Opium Wars, created an opportunity for the West to infiltrate the destabilized Eastern countries. This access allowed the West to exercise a form of supremacy over Asia, as the East was seen as powerless and incapable of self-governance. Thus, considering themselves as racially and politically superior, the West adopted a “White Man’s Burden” mentality described as the duty of the masculine Western men to dominate the East and civilize the “uneducated” and “feminine” Orientals. This racial supremacy mentality characterized the Eastern natives as feminine and the Western imperialists as masculine because the Eastern natives were obedient and docile to those of the West. This historical framework would eventually co...

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...te Gallimard to aid her country in gaining political advantage contradicts the Western view of the East as politically old-fashioned and vulnerable. Gallimard’s concluding words as he succumbs to his fate- “My name is Rene Gallimard- also known as Madame Butterfly” - signifies the subversion of the Western ideology of Orientalism by switching the stereotypes of the East and West between Song and Gallimard.
The history of Eastern political struggles and Western imperialism intersects with cultural diversity to form social ideologies based on racial and gender stereotypes. Madame Butterfly visibly perpetuates these stereotypes, whereas M. Butterfly seeks to dispute them. Essentially, the ironic story of Gallimard and Song in the play M. Butterfly can be seen as Hwang’s own revenge fantasy that atones for Cho-Cho-San’s tragic outcome in Long’s Madame Butterfly.