"M. Butterfly": An Introduction - From True Story to Puccini's Madama Butterfly

“M. Butterfly” is a 1998 play written by David Henry Hwang, an Asian-American playwright. It is based on the scandalous affair of Bernard Boursicot, a French diplomat, and Shi Pei Pu, a Chinese spy who deceives Boursicot for two decades. “M. Butterfly” tells us about Rene Gallimard, who, just like Boursicot, is another French diplomat stationed in China. His life is rather undesirable until the day he meets Song Liling, a beautiful Chinese opera diva. Blinded by his stereotype towards the Easterner, he embarks on his delusional love story until in the end, his ignorance backfires and brings him to disgrace.

Even though Hwang claimed that he had purposefully refrained from further research on Boursicot’s case, the two stories share several similarities. For example, both Gallimard and Boursicot are sexually naive, and they truly believe that their mistress had given birth to their son. Just like to Gallimard who in the end kills himself, Boursicot had also tried to slit his throat when he learns that Pei Pu is actually a man. However, while Gallimard desperately clings to his love for Song, Boursicot doesn’t perceives Pei Pu as his ideal woman. In fact, by the time Boursicot comes back to meet Pei Pu in China, he already has another relationship.

“M. Butterfly” is also inspired by Giacomo Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly”. In “Madama Butterfly”, the stereotype submissive Oriental woman, Cio-Cio-San, kills herself after she finds out that his husband has remarried and that her 3-year waiting is futile. Although Hwang’s main characters are also a (seemingly) masculine West man and a (seemingly) feminime Orient woman, he provides an interesting twist at the end of the play. This twist represents Hwang’s strong critic towards gender and racial stereotyping in “Madama Butterfy”. In this essay, we are going to compare Gallimard’s perception on himself, Western women, and Eastern women to analyze Hwang’s critics towards Orientalism and masculinity concept. Furthermore, we will analyze how the twisted ending of this play determine the text’s position as Hwang’s critics on Orientalism.