David Henry Hwang, the author of M. Butterfly, copiously uses the term “Oriental” to show an imperialistic interpretation of the East. The concept of Orientalism, in which Europeans and Americans typically brand Asian cultures as weak, feminine, and submissive, plays a significant role in Gallimard and Liling’s, the primary characters, unique relationship. Rene Gallimard is a French diplomat in China, who has an affair with a Chinese opera singer, Song Liling. Not known to Gallimard, Liling is a communist male agent masquerading as a ladylike, obedient Asian woman on a mission to manipulate and obtain government information out of Gallimard. When the French government accuses Gallimard of treason, he discovers Liling’s scheme and deception. …show more content…
As shown in the apartment that Gallimard bought for Liling, he already has power over her, as the apartment represents a cage that Liling is locked in. Cheerful by the events at the party, Gallimard chatters with Liling:
Gallimard: Are you my butterfly? I want you to say it.
Song: I don’t want to say it.
Gallimard: Are you my butterfly? (Silence; he crosses the room and begins to touch her hair.)
Song: Yes, I am. I am your Butterfly.
Gallimard: Then let me honest with you. It is because of you that I was promoted tonight. You have changed my life forever. My little butterfly, there should be no more secrets: I love you.
He starts to kiss her roughly. She resists slightly.
Song: Please…it all frightens me. I’m a modest Chinese girl.
Gallimard: My poor little treasure.
Song: I am your treasure. Though inexperienced, I am not… ignorant. They teach is things, our mothers, about pleasing a man. I’ll do my best to make you happy (Hwang
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In addition, when Liling unhesitatingly says that she will give him a child, he restores and boosts Gallimard’s ego and masculinity because this implies that Helga was infertile, instead of Gallimard. Gallimard’s affair with Liling is a manifestation of his yearning to live out a fantasy as dominate and controlling. In essence, Liling provides Gallimard an ideal submissive oriental woman who is willing to give up everything for a strong Western man like Gallimard. This feeds into his ego and muscularity because he believes that he has the ability and power to control her. She is permits Gallimard to believe that he has all the power, when in reality; it is Liling who’s in control. Although Liling talks about her willingness to give birth to Gallimard’s child, she can’t because she is actually a man. Judith Butler claims that “as a public action and performative act, gender is not a radical choice or project that reflects a merely individual choice, but neither is it imposed or inscribed upon the individual, as some post-structuralist displacements of the subject would contend”. In other words, gender is something that is socially constructed. The performance is effected with the strategic aim of maintaining gender within its binary frame. Gender is an act which has been rehearsed, much as a script survives
Although Mrs. Spring Fragrance has only lived in America for a short amount of time, her husband states “There are no more American words for her learning” (865). It is obvious through reading this statement that Mrs. Spring Fragrance has become quickly acquainted with not only the English language, but also with American customs and traditions. However, not every character in Mrs. Spring Fragrance adjusts to American culture as easily as Mrs. Spring Fragrance; some characters have a difficult time leaving their Chinese traditions of marriage and accepting that in America, love comes before marriage. Throughout Mrs. Spring Fragrance, Sui Sin Far describes the process that the Chinese characters experience as they slowly begin to alienate traditional Chinese culture and becoming Americanized through accepting American culture as their own.
The story focuses on her great-grandfather, who was in disapproval of the French occupation of Vietnam, but still excelled at his job as a Mandarin under the puppet imperial court, fearing persecution of his family if he were to resign. In this section, the author also mentions more about the how the values of confusion had influenced the Vietnamese people in attempts to justify her great grandfather’s
Society often views individuals that do not conform to its expectations as separate from the societal group. The Story of the Marquise-Marquis de Banneville, by Charles Perrault, François-Timoléon de Choisy, and Marie-Jeanne L’Héritier follows two main characters, one of which does not fully conform to binary gender presentation. The Girl with the Golden Eyes, authored by Honoré de Balzac, portrays an “oriental” woman as an object to be purchased and used. In Le Roman de Parthenay Ou Le Roman de Melusine, written by Coudrette, the heroine is a half human, half fairy who holds great power. In this paper, I argue that the majority of biologically female protagonists in these novels exist in-between the expectations society has for them, which
One striking similarity in the writings is that all characters lose their heritage over time. In “The Struggle to Be an All-American Girl”, Elizabeth was forced to attend Chinese school by her mother to retain her Chinese heritage and to speak proficient Chinese. However, she hated the Chinese School and strongly preferred speaking English over Chinese. She...
Chang portrays the complexity of Henry’s character by showing the conflict that he faces both in his personal and professional life. His confusion towards his own Cultural identity is noticed in his relationships with his co-workers as well as with his family. His personal relationship with his family, especially with his father and his wife exemplifies the clash between the two cultures which seems to tear Henry apart. Leila, Henry’s wife, seems to epitomize the traditional American Culture which Henry tries very hard to be a part of. Her forthright nature along with the independence and individuality contradicts the stereotypical qualities of an Asian wife. However, Henry’s desperation is seen in his forgiving attitude towards Leila’s action and behavior. His deter...
The issue of cultural stereotypes and misconceptions thematically runs throughout David Henry Hwang’s play M. Butterfly. The play is inspired by a 1986 newspaper story about a former French diplomat and a Chinese opera singer, who turns out to be a spy and a man. Hwang used the newspaper story and deconstructed it into Madame Butterfly to help breakdown the stereotypes that are present between the East and the West. Hwang’s play overall breaks down the sexist and racist clichés that the East-West have against each other that reaffirm the Western male culture ideas. The stereotypes presented in the play revolve around the two main characters, Gallimard and Song. The play itself begins in the present with Gallimard, a French diplomat who has been incarcerated in a Beijing prison. He relives his fantasies for the past with his perfect woman and shares his experience with the readers throughout the remainder of the play. Upon Gallimard’s arrival in China, he attends the opera and meets Song, and Gallimard immediately describes Song as his “butterfly”. Gallimard falls in love with the “delicate Oriental woman” that Song portrays (22). He then buys into the Western male stereotype that Eastern women need protection by strong, masculine Western men. Gallimard ends up falling in love with Song and has an affair with her to fulfill the stereotypical idea of a dominant Western male controlling an Eastern woman. Throughout Gallimard’s relationship with Song, the readers discover that Song is in reality a male spy for the Chinese government. Song had manipulated his looks and actions to mirror those of the ideal Chinese woman in order to earn Gallimard’s affection. M. Butterfly’s main issue arises from the cultural stereotypes of the masculin...
In Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”, Nora Helmer portrays the Victorian English archetype of the “angel in the house”, otherwise known as the “doll” metaphor. In the Victorian age, the social construction of gender roles was much more traditional than contemporary gender roles; women had a clear role in society of which they could not escape. A major focus of social construction is to uncover the ways in which individuals and groups participate in the construction of their perceived social reality. As society is revolutionized, people individualize, freeing themselves from the constraints imposed by traditional societies. Nora Helmer represents an antecedaneous model of a feministic viewpoint in an oppressed position. Trapped in her role of the “doll”, Nora struggles to break free, her actions precipitated by her husband, Torvald’s, actions. Weintraub, in his ““Doll’s House” Metaphor Foreshadowed in Victorian Fiction” critical essay, depicts Shaw’s work and proposes the idea that the male protagonist has an immense impact on the female protagonist’s automorphism as “the doll” and the decisions she makes. In Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House,” Nora’s characterization and ultimate decision to leave can be seen as a struggle against the combination of Torvald and Society’s pressure to conform.
Throughout most of literature and history, the notion of ‘the woman’ has been little more than a caricature of the actual female identity. Most works of literature rely on only a handful of tropes for their female characters and often use women to prop up the male characters: female characters are sacrificed for plot development. It may be that the author actually sacrifices a female character by killing her off, like Mary Shelly did in Frankenstein in order to get Victor Frankenstein to confront the monster he had created, or by reducing a character to just a childish girl who only fulfills a trope, as Oscar Wilde did with Cecily and Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest. Using female characters in order to further the male characters’
Gender roles and inequality are still evolving and continue to change. It has only been not that long ago that women started to break out their outlined roles and looked at about the same or- almost the same level- as men on a wide scale basis. Indeed, some women in certain parts of the world are still represented in the same way as in both plays that will be compared in this essay. The characters in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll's House highlight the challenges of gender roles. The attention focused on points of comparison and contrast of men vs women's reactions in the course of both plays, which, allow the audience to think about gender identity and role conflicts. The other common shared view in both plays is that they are both showcased from a female perspective.
In the following essay I will seek to establish the construction of feminine gender roles in ‘Game of Thrones’, the HBO television adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s series of novels ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’, which is played out in the fictional kingdom of Westeros. Consequently I will analyse these feminine gender roles from a materialistic viewpoint and discuss how a number of characters, principally female (since we will see how patriarchy is the favoured practice in Westeros), both conform to and reject preconceived ideas of gender performance and representation. To begin with it is necessary to establish an understanding of what ‘gender’ is. “Gender is the range of physical, biological, mental and behavioral characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, the term may refer to biological sex (i.e. the state of being male, female or intersex), sex-based social structures (including gender roles and other social roles), or gender identity” (Urdy 1994). Martin himself acknowledges De Beauvoir’s (1973) suggestion that gender is unnatural, ‘a social construction’, “I regard men and women as all human- yes there are differences, but many of those differences are created by the culture that we live in, whether it is the medieval culture of Westeros, or 21st century western culture” (Salter 2013). The characters portrayed and developed in ‘Game of Thrones’ are no different in that they too are subject to the culture that has been created around them and the experiences by which they progress “as De Beauvoir puts it, consciousness exists one’s body, which, in the context of ...
At the end of the play M. Butterfly, a jailed French diplomat turned spy named Gallimard says, "There is a vision of the Orient that I have" (Hwang 3.3.7). In that moment he is implying that there are still beautiful women, as he thought his "Butterfly" was. This is suggestive of the colonial appeal. Colonization is made possible by one society characterizing another in a way that makes it seem like a good idea. The characterization of these cultures, such as the Orient or Africa, is carried out through literature, works of art, and drama. Certainly, plays, poems, books, and stories are only a few of the ways used to convince the masses of a modern nation of the justification to colonize. If one wants to rebel against colonization, one would need to place corruption upon the colonizer so to support the liberation. This approach looks to be accepted in drama, where there are two excellent illustrations of postcolonial literature, M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang, and A Tempest by Aime Cesaire. Both plays are re-worked versions of and Puccini's opera, Madame Butterfly and Shakespeare's The Tempest, and retain similar characters and basic plots. Shakespeare's and Puccini's works created symbols of other cultures. Caliban is the black devil, and Cio-Cio San is the timid and beautiful "Butterfly." These symbols have become stereotypes in Western culture, and formed, the justification for colonization.
Egalia’s Daughters explicitly expresses how genderized our culture is by presenting the opposite of what we know to be true. The book reverses all that we know to be socially acceptable and correct for men and women by reversing those gender roles and creating what we know to be masculine as feminine, and what we know to be feminine as masculine. Brantenberg writes about a society where men (she calls them manwim) take on what we consider to be female roles. They stay in the home, take care of the kids, are stereotypically passive, ditsy, subordinate to women, unintelligent, etc. Whereas women in the Egalian society (she calls them wom), make the money, are powerful, dominant, aggressive, authoritarian, etc. Wom are looked up to and considered the more powerful sex, and menwom are considered to be vulnerable and weak.
The first thing that the reader will notice regarding gender is the title of the play “A Doll’s House”. This reveals to the reader, Nora’s and possible Torvald’s status within the play. Nora is unable to be herself as she is not seen as an equal in her marriage. Instead, she is something to be admired and flaunted. This need for her to be something that Torvald can show off. Both Nora and Torvald are living lives based on illusion. Torvald has made Nora his perfect little doll so that he can look good. She thinks that he is a person with incredible strength, she becomes disillusioned with him at the end of the play when he exposes himself as just a man. This paper will look at the way that society’s expectations of gender roles are perceived
...her defiance to no longer comply with the gender constructions of society. Ibsen, therefore, criticises society’s compliance with the constructions of the culture and urges us to be more like Nora is at her epiphany. Lady Bracknell is memorable for her comically masculine traits and character. Not only does Wilde shatter our gender expectations, but ridicules the compliance of individuals in the performances that they make for society. Both plays raise questions regarding the submission of men and women to society’s presumptions and pressure regarding gender, and criticise individuals for conforming without asking questions. Each play makes us question our own performances for society and the performances of others in our lives. Nora’s realisation that she has married a construction is as unnerving now as it was to its contemporary audience because it forces us to look at our own behaviour and that of others around us, presenting us with a frightening and menacing awareness that we also may be existing in false and constructed lives.
Aggleton shows the differences of sex from the female view to the male view. He sees women as getting caught up in s...