i just had to write a midterm paper on M. Butterfly, so i'm going to post my analysis...i know it's very late, but just in case you come back to read my reply. =]
It is important to acknowledge the fact that Gallimard knows that Song is actually a man, but he pretends to not know. Although he asks Song to strip while they’re together, he stops Song from taking off her clothes after Song insists that she is a modest Chinese girl. It is as though Gallimard himself is not sure of his sexual orientation. His fetish, Madame Butterfly, is another interesting element to his character. Why is he fascinated with the "Perfect Woman"? If Gallimard is homosexual, why does he want Butterfly? As Sigmund Freud explains in "Fetishism," a fetish is “a substitute for [a] woman’s ([a] mother’s) penis that [a] little boy once believed in and…does not want to give up” (Freud 152). The boy “refused to take cognizance of the fact of his having perceived that woman does not possess a penis” (Freud 153). The boy is afraid of castration after seeing his mother’s genitals. It seems that Gallimard has castration anxiety as well as homosexual anxiety. Gallimard longs for phallic order, but his penis does not work to follow the phallic order. In Scene V of Act II, his wife Helga asks him to go see Dr. Bolleart to find out if there’s something wrong with him because the couple cannot conceive. Helga has already visited the doctor, and he has informed her that there is nothing wrong with her. Gallimard’s castration anxiety and fertility anxiety are evident as he refuses to see Dr. Bolleart. He feels incompetent because he feels like “God himself is laughing at [him] if [he] can’t produce a child” (Hwang 40). Song, as a traditional Chinese woman, explains to Gallimard that in China, if a wife cannot provide her husband a child, he will find another wife to give him his son. Song also assures Gallimard that he is the man she loves, and she will not let the doctor “judge” her man. She tells him that she wants to have his child (Hwang 41). Song’s word and action are those of the Perfect Woman’s as Gallimard wishes for. Song makes him feel adequate and masculine. She does not mind that he has to honor someone else as his wife while Song is his secret lover. Song’s depiction of Butterfly causes Gallimard to get lost even more in his fantasy. Even if Gallimard is gay, his desire for Butterfly can be explained as something he uses to suppress his homosexual desire. When Song tells him that she is pregnant, Gallimard believes her. Although they never had intercourse, Gallimard wants to feel adequate so badly that he accepts Song’s lie as truth.
During trial in Paris, Song tells the judge how he managed to fool Gallimard for so many years. He explains that “[t]he West has sort of an international rape mentality towards the East” (Hwang 62). This means that the Western men believe that when an Asian girl says no, she actually means yes. The West thinks that the East “wants to be dominated…” (Hwang 62). Song succeeded in fooling Gallimard by becoming his fantasy woman, making him want to believe that she was really a woman. Furthermore, Song can “never be completely a man” because he is Asian (Hwang 62). Song’s criticism of the West stays true to this day when Asian men are often deemed by the Western society to be not masculine enough.
Song understands that Gallimard has always known that the woman he thought he loved is actually a man. Gallimard pretends to not know Song’s real gender, refuses to see Song’s true form when he strips all his clothes before him. Gallimard is similar to the boy who “refused to take cognizance of the fact of his having perceived that woman does not possess a penis” (Freud 153). Song is Gallimard’s homosexual desire. He is the “Perfect Woman” to Gallimard. When Song strips, there is a reversal of roles in rape mentality. Gallimard thinks that Song, as an Asian man, has an international rape mentality. When Gallimard tells Song to stop stripping, Song believes that he actually wants to see him strip. Song says to Gallimard, “You know something, Rene? Your mouth says no, but your eyes say yes…” (Hwang 65). By stripping, Song makes Gallimard think about his own sexual identity and realize that their affair was more than espionage and the fantasy of Madame Butterfly. Gallimard figures out that his affair with Song was his homosexual desire. Song wants him to believe that he adores the woman who was actually a man. Gallimard now realizes that the love he thought he had was only in his mind. The woman he loved was only someone he created.
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