(1.3.4-5). The irony in Gallimard’s favorite opera, to which he eventually centers his own life’s fantasy around, being one whose male protagonist he describes as “not very good looking, not too bright, and pretty much a wimp” (1.3.5). This is ironic because Gallimard ultimately sacrifices his life in an attempt to become like Pinkerton. Hwang is clever in his subversion of Madame Butterfly by creating ironies throughout the play and using these ironies to reveal the injustices of Orientalism. The major ironies regarding Orientalism within Hwang’s M. Butterfly are those that are in relation to Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. Also, even Hwang himself seems to suggest, in his Afterword to the novel, that the motive for writing M. Butterfly was to …show more content…
Butterfly,” Songfeng Wen writes on the supremacy felt by Western men, “Westerners have taken for granted that the Occident is superior to the Orient. This unconscious imperialist mentality and the sense of racial supremacy make the Western men believe in their status as the privileged class” (Wen 44). If Gallimard was unaware of the implications of Orientalism in his interest in Song and Madame Butterfly prior to meeting Song, she took the idea and reversed it upon meeting Gallimard. After making accusations that Gallimard fantasizes about “the submissive Oriental woman and the cruel white man,” Song explicitly reverses the plot of Madame Butterfly in an attempt to reveal to Gallimard that she disapproves of the …show more content…
Gallimard begins to be recognized not only by those in his personal life, but also by the French ambassador to China, Manuel Toulon. Toulon recognizes Gallimard for the confidence he has gained from obtaining an Oriental woman by stating, “Toulon: [T]he past few months, I don’t know how it happened, you’ve become this new aggressive confident… thing. And they also tell me you get along with the Chinese” (1.12.37-38). Through this recognition of Gallimard’s personality change, Gallimard is offered a promotion and does literally advance in society because of his conformity to Orientalist ideals. On the other hand, once Gallimard returns to Paris, he begins to realize that he is not as successful in the West as he was in the East. This “disappointment” that Gallimard feels is the result of his loss of the “Perfect Woman” (2.11.76-77). It is ironic that Gallimard feels he has lost his confidence because of the loss of the “Perfect Woman” because in reality he is a disappointment to the West because he never possessed her. Society ultimately views Gallimard as a fool because of his relationship with Song, as opposed to a masculine Western
Lady Bertilak’s deceptive seduction of Gawain demonstrates this truth and illuminates her motive in seducing Gawain as her flirtatious behavior that “urged him so near the limit” (1771) is clearly an attempt to reacquaint Gawain with his natural feelings. In Camelot, men and women are so civilized that their emotions appear false and manufactured. By seducing Gawain with spontaneity and passion, Lady Bertilak strips Gawain of this control over primal urges. While Gawain attempts to resist these urges that contradict his courtly ways, his submission to kiss lady Bertilak and eventually accept her chastity belt reveals that he has submitted to his natural feelings. With such an orderly and distinguished knight proving vulnerable to his emotion and temptation the author imposes the idea that perfection in terms of morality and way of life is unattainable as feelings cannot be controlled. Lady Bertilak further clarifies the intent of her relationship with Gawain by shaming him for “refusing to love a lady”(1779-1780). This shame is clearly unwarranted as Lady Bertilak is breaching moral statues herself by being unfaithful to her husband; however, the claim does succeed in connecting her seduction of Gawain to the ideas of empathy and genuine affection, revealing the statement as selfish manipulation motivated by the lady’s desire to expose Gawain’s most natural emotions. By
The narrative opens with a holiday feast in King Arthur’s court. The richness of this setting is represented by the decorations surrounding Queen Guenevere described in lines 76-80. “With costly silk curtains, a canopy over,/ Of Toulouse and Turkestan tapestries rich/ All broidered and bordered with the best gems/ Ever brought into Britain, with bright pennies/ to pay.” These lines also symbolize the queen’s role in the poem of a stately symbol of chivalric Camelot and as a female ideal. In this setting women are all around, but Guenevere is positioned above them and is surrounded by expensive, beautiful things. She is clearly made superior.
Meursault is a fairly average individual who is distinctive more in his apathy and passive pessimism than in anything else. He rarely talks because he generally has nothing to say, and he does what is requested of him because he feels that resisting commands is more of a bother than it is worth. Meursault never did anything notable or distinctive in his life: a fact which makes the events of the book all the more intriguing.
Extensive work has been done on this alliterative four-part poem written by an anonymous contemporary of Chaucer. Feminists have attacked his diatribe against women at the end, or analyzed the interaction between Gawain and the women of Bercilak’s court; those of the D. W. Robertson school seek the inevitable biblical allusions and allegory concealed within the medieval text; Formalists and philologists find endless enjoyment in discovering the exact meaning of certain ambiguous and archaic words within the story. Another approach that yields interesting, if somewhat dated, results, is a psychological or archetypal analysis of the poem. By casting the Green Knight in the role of the Jungian Shadow, Sir Gawain’s adventure to the Green Chapel becomes a journey of self-discovery and a quest – a not entirely successful one – for personal individuation. The Jungian process of individuation involves “.... ...
“Remember we are women, we’re not born to contend with men” (Sophocles, 18). The popular literary works, Antigone and A Doll’s House, written by Sophocles and Ibsen, are two famous tragedies that have been performed and read throughout the decades. Although countless audiences have been entertained by these well written plays, few would care to guess that many lessons and several unfortunate truths can be found with a less than tedious inspection of the characters and the reactions they give to their circumstances. The two main characters in these stories, Antigone and Nora, face adversities and problems that are amplified by their society’s views on the rights and abilities of women. The two main male characters in these plays, Creon and Helmer, cause the greater part of the struggle that the female protagonists face. The difficulties that Helmer and Creon create during the plot of these stories are the cause of three major characteristics of what one would consider typical to a headstrong man in a leadership position. The three features of Creon and Helmer that lead to the eventual downfall of Antigone and Nora, are pride, arrogance, and ignorance.
all, Song has deceived a somewhat intelligent individual for over twenty years. I saying , Song :"Rule One is " Men always believe what they want to hear." ( 82 ) I don't think that is entirely accurate,but Song has proven it to be throughout the play in dealing with Gallimard. So basically in that area Song's "rule" applies. Gillimard wanted to believe his "love" was indeed a young , Oriental woman. He refused to acknowlege otherwise because that was his " fantasy". However, I must disagree when "Rule One" also states, Song: " So a girl can tell the most obnoxious lies and the guys will believe them every time--" (82 ) Again, as far as Song's relationship with Gillimard is concerned, it is again truthful. However, I think that would be an extreme exaggeration in speaking of "men" in general, even in terms of "men" in this play. I don't think Song could have fooled Marc for very long. I think perhaps we see some of Hwang's own experiences in his life poking through into the play.
The “Butterfly’s Tongue” is a film directed by Jose Luis Cuerda that transports us to Spain during the Second Spanish Republic and draws a clear and authentic image of the years before the civil war and the transition to it. The main focuses of the film are education, the new generations, and the continual battle (first "civilized" and then violent) between two completely contrasting ideologies for trying to control these two fundamental social elements. Cuerda masterfully manages the scenic positioning of her characters in several of the scenes to demonstrate this ideological struggle. An undoubted demonstration of this is the arrangement where the little Moncho (Manuel Lozano) is in the midpoint, while Don Gregorio (Fernando Gomez) and the
Gawain's travels in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight suggest a world in which home--i.e., Camelot--is "normal," while away--the opposing castle of Hautdesert where Gawain perforce spends his Christmas vacation--is "other," characterized by unfamiliarity, dislocation, perversity. And in fact the atmosphere at Hautdesert appears somewhat peculiar, with various challenges to "normal" sexual identity, and with permutations of physical intimacy, or at least the suggestion of such intimacy, that are, to say the least, surprising. The typical journey of medieval romance juxtaposes a "real" world where things and people behave according to expectation with a "magical" world in which the usual rules are suspended. According to this paradigm, we might expect that this poem would place Hautdesert outside the bounds of tradition, separated by its difference from the expectations that govern Camelot and the remainder of the Arthurian world.
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...
However, as the novel progresses, the soundness of his fantasy begins to unwind and undergo pressure. As seen in Scene Two of Act One, the party notes to be in present time, however it is still a projection of Gallimard’s imagination. It can be considered present time because he situates the scene in present time, but the conversations and proceedings are still a projection of Gallimard’s imagination and are therefore fictitious. Merely by reading the dialogue of the party members, it is evident how extensive Gallimard resides in his denial. The party goers mock his ridiculous status and position, and even question how Gallimard has not come to believe the truth, stating his fault is due to “simple ignorance” (page three). By addressing Gallimard’s
Toer’s portrayal of Annelies Mellema as innocent and childish is symbolic of a naïve pre-colonial Java before the corruption of Dutch influence. Her birth being the result of a unique relationship between a Dutch colonizer and Javan concubine known as Nyai Ontosoroh, Annelies exhibits physical features of both cultures. Annelies is characterized as being a girl that is “white-skinned and refined with a European face and the hair and eyes of a Native” representing the crossing of two cultures within Java (Toer 25). Despite her capability of helping her mother Nyai Ontosoroh run their family business, Annelies remains submissive and allows various authority figures in her life like her mother, doctor, and husband Minke to make life decisions on her behalf. This, coupled with her physical fragility that is especially apparent in the form of illness whenever Minke is absent from her life for extended periods of time is Toer’s method of illustrating the weakness of pre-colonial Indonesia that is eventually conquered and forever changed by the Dutch. Despite h...
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.
Margaret is an intelligent, articulate, and ambitious woman who desires to rise up in social status by marrying a man of higher social rank. She attends to those above her, in hopes of elevating her status as she becomes closer to the upper-class. As a minor character, she plays a small yet crucial role in advancing Don John’s plot to slander Hero and spoil her wedding. As a lower-class character, Margaret serves as a foil to the rich girls, particularly Hero, who embodies every attitude and mindset Margaret does not. But she also offers an alternative perspective on the upper-class characters in the play. Because Margaret is victimized because of her social ambitions, punished for wanting to rise above her ...
...ghthood within their story. Both poets remind the readers of the disparity between the ideals of chivalries presented in romances, and the reality of lived knighthood, highlighting how problematic the understanding of chivalry and Christianity (knighthood) could be for medieval audiences. Though chivalry shines as a brilliant light of the high civilization in the fourteenth century, both tales suggests that chivalry is at best a limited system, which achieves its brilliant at the cost of a distortion of natural life. It was part of the social and ethical system but did not take into account the entire range of human needs, mainly the fact of human morality and sense of human frailty. The context in which knights are depicted and celebrated in the medieval romance does not support a smooth connection between the harsh realities of a century of internecine strife.
Race is a major factor in the identification of a character in a literary piece, as well as reality. Race ties into who one’s family is, where they come from, and how their culture is constructed. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Antionette is confused by her racial identity causing her to question where she belongs and where she stands as a person. Antoinette explains her thoughts when stating, “’It was a song about a white cockroach. That's me.