M. Butterfly

M. Butterfly

David Henry Hwang’s play ‘M. Butterfly’ is about a French diplomat Rene Gallimard who is in love with Chinese opera star, Song Liling; who deceives him by hiding the fact that she is a man and also a spy of Chinese government. One of the main characters of the play is Song and she is the material for desire for Gallimard. This desire of Gallimard to possess Song is a great example of materialism. The play also explains the concepts of feminism, cultural context, metaphor, dramatic structure and verbal irony.

Song is described as a young, beautiful and delicate Asian woman. Several times in the play, she has been described as ‘A perfect women.’ In the play, she is described more as an object to be possessed. Song is referred as a ‘Butterfly’ and also as a ‘Little flower’ by Gallimard. Butterfly and flower are delicate and beautiful, so is Song. This physical quality of butterfly and flower are associated with Song by Gallimard. Thus, Hwang has used metaphor to describe the physical beauty of Song. Associating physical quality and also the character of a woman with flowers, birds and food objects is not new.

The metaphors commonly used for women in Italy and France is one of such example. Simone de Beauoir, a French feminist writer, published in one of her work, Le Deuxieme that a picture of woman starts to flash in the mind of a man on hearing the word ‘female.’ He imagines her to be a mantis, spider, a bird and also as a flavored food items. The associations are also made of females with small delicate animals like chick, kitten, and sparrow and with desserts like cheesecake, tart, sweetie pie, honey. This reflects the male oriented ideology for women in English society as well. The ideology for comparing females with animals which are small and delicate might have arisen because females are small, delicate, they can be controlled and also because man are superior to animals. Whereas, women are compared to food items like desserts and fruits because they are sweet, juicy and food can be consumed when desired or hungry. Females are also given names on their characters. A polite and gentle women are preferred as rabbits,