y M. Butterfly

In the play M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang, the action derives from a true story about a French diplomat who had a long-term affair with a Chinese singer, presumably thinking this was a woman when in fact it was a man. The story was also a spy story as the "woman" acquires secrets from her diplomat-lover for her government. The title of the play intentionally evokes images both of Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly and what in French would be seen as "Monsieur" Butterfly. The opera embodies a certain Western attitude toward Asian women and toward Asians in general, and Hwang's play uses those ideas as something against which to balance his own drama as he deconstructs certain ideas from the opera and creates a different sense of operatic reality. Within this operatic universe, Gallimard's complacent Western stereotyping of Asians is a strong force, one that helps explain how he is duped, a deceit in which he participates and which leads to his downfall.

The story in M. Butterfly is itself indeed operatic, for the inconsistencies and bizarre behaviors would be more readily accepted in an operatic setting. The essential question raised by the play and by the real case on which it was built is, why did the French diplomat not know his love interest was a woman over a period of many years?

Gallimard is presented as a man who has waited his whole life for a beautiful woman "who would lay down for you" (505). Gallimard seems to elevate Asian women, but in fact he see

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, CioCio San, or "Butterfly" in Japanese. He marries CioCio San, and she bears him a child. He then leaves Japan for three years while vowing to return, but CioCio San eventually learns that Pinkerton does not plan to return to her and that he is to take another bride. The news devastates Butterfly, who then kills herself with a knife. The submissive Oriental woman even submits in death -- she punishes herself for the perfidy of Pinkerton. In Hwang's play, the Butterfly image is what his hero, Gallimard, keeps in his mind at all times and elevates to a high position. Gallimard tells the story to the audience, shifting time and place as needed to do so, and in the end Gallimard makes his own statement about his relationship with Song Liling, challenging the laughter of others as he denies in public that Song Liling is a man: There is a vision of the Orient that I have. Of slender women in chong sams and kimonos who die for the love of unworthy foreign devils. Who are born and raised to be the perfect women. Who take whatever punishment we give them, and bounce back, strengthened by love, unconditionally (536). This image derives directly from Madame Butterfly, including the reference to women who kill themselves for

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