M. Butterfly

The play, "Madame Butterfly", written by David Henry Hwang, explores stereotypes between Eastern and Western culture and also between man and woman, and how these stereotypes affect social relationships. The play starts out with Rene Gallimard, a french diplomat, who was locked up in prison because he had been deceived by a Chinese opera singer. He mentions that he has fallen in love with the "Perfect Woman", which is the opera singer, but little did he know, this "woman" was actually a man.

In the play, the line, "The West thinks of itself as masculine--big guns, big industry, big money--so the East is feminine--weak, delicate, poor...but good at art, and full of inscrutable wisdom--the feminine mystique" (Act 3, Scene 1, p.83) describes how many viewed race and gender in the world. The West was viewed as masculine and strong, whereas the East was viewed as feminine and submissive. How the East was viewed didn't show any difference between men and women in the East, because to the world, as long as men were from the East, then they were viewed as weak.

Rene Gallimard believed that asian women were submissive and catered to men's needs, just like Rene's favorite opera that he had introduced in the beginning that was called, "Madame Butterfly". He described the asian female character, "Cio-Cio-San", who was also known as "Butterfly", as a woman who gave up everything to her man, Pinkerton, who was a US Navy. Rene described Pinkerton as a man who was "not very good looking, not too bright, and pretty much a wimp" (Act 1, Scene 3, p. 10). This shows us that because Butterfly is from the East, she probably views the men from the West as strong, and so she falls in love with Pinkerton, even though Pinkerton is viewed as a "wimp". Madame Butterfly could be Rene's favorite opera show because Rene probably had the same views as Pinkerton, and that perhaps, Rene is interested in finding a submissive lady from the East so that he could feel powerful. Because he was blinded by his beliefs, he was deceived by Song Liling, the opera singer. Song pretended to be a woman, and had fooled Rene into revealing important information that lead to his punishment.