51 pages • 1-hour read
M. Butterfly
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Symbols & Motifs
Madame Butterfly
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual content and death by suicide.
Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly serves not only as the play’s deconstructive framework but also as a motif representing the themes of Blurring the Line Between Fantasy and Reality and The Selfishness of Love. Once Gallimard begins to describe the plot of the opera in Act I, Scene 3, he exposes his innermost wish to enact the opera’s events in real life. The scene reinforces this wish as Gallimard dramatizes his summary, acting out the role of Pinkerton, whom he sees as his avatar.
Gallimard continually evokes the opera throughout the play, referring to Song as his Butterfly. This subtly implies the disconnect between Song as an individual and Song as Gallimard sees her. Song enables Gallimard to live out his fantasy of being loved the way Butterfly loved Pinkerton. When Song reveals his gender and strips for Gallimard, Gallimard formalizes the division of his perceptions from Song’s individuality by declaring that he wasn’t in love with Song but with the lie he told.
The play subverts the Madame Butterfly narrative by recasting Gallimard in the Butterfly role, having him instead of Madame Butterfly die at the end for love. Whereas Puccini’s opera framed Butterfly’s death as a sacrificial act performed in the name of love, the play frames Gallimard’s death by suicide as a last desperate attempt to claim his fantasy and make what’s left of his life feel worthwhile.
Gallimard’s Child
Gallimard’s child is another motif for the themes of Blurring the Line Between Fantasy and Reality and The Intersection of Gender and Politics. In Act II, Scene 5, Helga pressures Gallimard into having a child with her, which he’s reluctant to do. Later in the scene, Song offers to bear the child for Gallimard, suggesting that Helga is the one unable to conceive a child. The choice to have a child becomes political given this dichotomy. By having a child with Helga, Gallimard resigns himself to the expectations of his social status and to his allegiance to the West. By having a child with Song, Gallimard formalizes his commitment to her, which she uses to support her espionage efforts as a Chinese agent.
Song procures a child with Chin’s help and then presents the child to Gallimard, who hesitates to accept that the child resembles either of them. This brief moment of skepticism signals Gallimard’s inability to deny the truth, foreshadowing Song’s revelations in the play’s final act. Gallimard does accept the child as his, however, and continues to support the boy when Song finds him in France.
Magazines
Pornographic magazines symbolize Gallimard’s preference for fantasy. Act I, Scene 5 introduces the symbol, interrupting Gallimard’s summary of Pinkerton’s first meeting with Butterfly. This draws an implicit connection between his idealization of Butterfly’s romance with Pinkerton and his imagined interactions with the girls in the magazines. Gallimard imagines himself spying on one such girl through her window, who indicates that she wants him to watch her strip, even if it goes against the conservative morals he was taught as a child.
The play reintroduces imagery from the magazines at two significant points in the play. First, in Act I, Scene 9, Gallimard dreams that he’s watching Song through her window as she strips off her clothes, directly echoing the earlier scene. Act II, Scene 6, introduces the character of Renee, describing her body as similar to those of the magazine girls. Gallimard pursues an affair with Renee to satisfy his fantasies, which he breaks off when Renee reveals her true self.
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