Gallimard
character in a story of M. butterfly actually is an innocent person. I can say
that Gallimard is innocent because of his experiences with women that he must
be helped by his best friend, Marc. In his life, Gallimard receives a lot of
unpleasant experiences of life about women and that are not a really good
experiences to him. The women that have given him experience to Gallimard are
women from West or Europe. Then, from his unpleasant experiences that he had
received, he felt like he was under ‘pressure’ or ‘control’ from the women.
Based on those experiences, ideology of Western thought that influences the
shaping of stereotypes about women was created by Gallimard.
Gallimard’s view
toward Western women after all those experiences has changed to the Western
women. He feels ‘scared’ and ‘inferior’ to the Western women which like they
demand equality, have power against men, and ‘smarter’. In my opinion, the Western
women seem bolder to face the man. The women look like demand the equality of
rights to be synchronized by a man and can play the figure of a man in life.
All that can be seen from how Gallimard sees the Western women potrayed in the
play that are Isabelle, Helga, Renee and pin-up girl of his uncle magazine.
If we see
Gallimard’s first experience with a woman, that is Isabelle, we can see that
she was a nightmare and bad first experience for Gallimard about woman. “I
looked up, and there was this woman . . . bouncing up and down on my loins.”
& “screaming, and breaking off the branches all around me, and pounding my
butt up and down into the dirt.” (Act 1, Scene 11) when Gallimard have sex with
her, she was dominating at that time. It was seen from how she treated
Gallimard in bed. According to my view, as a man, Gallimard should be able to
balance the 'technique' from Isabelle, but because he is still innocent, it
seems that Isabelle is more experienced, and Isabelle likes giving a tutor to
Gallimard about how he should treat a woman. Gallimard even let her perform a
sex style called the woman on top and it is a symbol that reflects that
Isabelle is more suprior than Gallimard that let her do that style of sex. In
addition, it reflects that Gallimard is inferior compared over her; even it
seems that he is 'colonized' by women.
Then, besides
Isabelle, Gallimard also has not very different views about Helga, his wife. If
we look at the text, at the first dialog of Helga "my father was
ambassador to Australia. I grew up among criminals and kangaroos. "(Act 1,
Scene 5) through this dialogue, I could see that Gallimard feels inferior and
instead think about the oriental woman whom he met in China, Song Liling. Then,
it implies that she is strong and tough woman, because she is used to live away
from her home and was always surrounded by criminals. It is inversely
proportional to Gallimard after he heard Helga mentioned her experience. He
says “hearing that brought me to the altar—“(Act 1, scene 5). Maybe he got
married at the age of 31 years because Gllimard could not attract women as a
man due to his lack of courage to face the West women and more targeted a
position in marry Helga. Then, Gallimard becomes more depressed when he argued
with Helga about the problem should he meet Dr. Bolleart to talk about the
issue of whether Gallimard had a problem so he can not produce decent.
"And I told you, it's only a matter of time. Why did you bring a doctor
into this? We just have to keep Trying, like a crapshoot, actually. "(Act
2, Scene 5) based on the text, Gallimard feel scared in my opinion, if it was
true that he must have been the factor they can not have children. I think, the
reasons Gallimard married Helga are because he feels ‘scared’ to Western women,
so he married Helga who is older than him and he was married her at the age of
31 years. It was a late age for a married man in my opinion. Though Helga is an
older woman, not beautiful, wayward husband and very argumentative, and that
all is not a type of perfect woman who is coveted by Gallimard.
Other than
Gallimard view toward these two women, we can still see his discomfort to the Western
women through Renee. Renee is a woman who he met at Austrian embassy. Gallimard
thought that Renee is not really different with two other women that he has met
before. What I see through the text is, Gallimard feels shock and insecure
after he meets Renee. He sees Renee as a woman that is really masculine, smart
and straightforward person even though she is a woman and it makes him feel
insecure to her.
“And so, I
embarked on my first extra extramarital affair. Renee was picture perfect. Like
the body like those girls in magazine. If I put a tissue paper over my eyes, I
wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. And it was exciting to be with
someone who wasn’t afraid to be seen completely naked. But is it possible for a
woman to be too uninhibited, too willing, so as to seem almost too . . .
masculine?” (Act 2, Scene 5)
I
believe that the dialogue above shows the courage, power and superiority
against Gallimard. She could make Gallimard feel insecure I think, and make him
have a thought that Western women could be more masculine than a man. Gallimard
as a man is not really masculine in my opinion because he is afraid to face a woman;
even there is a stereotype that a French man is a ladies man or a playboy. However, he thinks like that because he feels
inferior and he considers himself unattractive.
“I guess. But,
like. It just hangs there. This little . . . flap of flesh. And there’s so much
fuss that we make about it. Like, I think the reason we fight wars is because
we wear clothes. Because no one knows—between the men, I mean—who has the
bigger . . . weenie. So, if I’m a guy with small one, I’m going to build a
really big building or take over a really big piece of land or write a really
long book so other men don’t know, right? But, see, it never really works,
that’s the problem. I mean, you conquer the country, or whatever, but you’re
still wearing clothes, so there’s no way to prove absolutely whose is bigger or
smaller. And that’s what we called civilized society. The whole world run by a
bunch of men with pricks the size of pins” (Act 2, Scene 5)
In my opinion from Renee’s dialogue above, I can say
that the real meaning of weenie that she mentioned is about courage. It proves
that actually men are cowards; they hide their ‘courage’ inside their
‘clothes’. She also criticized the way how men run the world with such a timid.
So, we do not really know who the bravest man is. Is it the man from the West
or from the East? She also gives her suggestion if she were a man, and I think
it is brilliant because she could act and think more manly than any other man.
Because of that, Gallimard feel that western women are really beyond his capability
and start to think that Eastern women, who is potrayed would be his ideal by
Song Liling.
After
we know the point of view about western women by Gallimard, I am going to
analyze his feeling about Eastern women. The Western stereotypes the Eastern
women as a woman that submissive, delicate, beautiful, care about fashion, love
unconditionally, uneducated, and want to be treated bad. All of those traits
has completed the qualification of the “perfect women” that Galiimard wants. Because of that, Gallimard feels superior
against Eastern women. Gallimard thinks
that Western position is above Eastern. Thus, he could do anything he likes to
get pleased by eastern women. In my
opinion, Gallimard must have known that Song is a man, but because Song gives
him a pleasure, he denied that Song is a man. Because the “perfect women” that
he really wants is inside Song. Based on those explanations of Gallimard point
of view as the Western, I conclude that he feels inferior to Western women but
feels superior to Eastern women.
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