The "Identity Problem" in M. Butterfly
Melissa McMasters

            Near the close of David Henry Hwang’s play M. Butterfly, an exasperated Rene Gallimard tells his lover Song Liling, who is denying he is “just a man” despite being obviously naked, “I think you must have some kind of identity problem” (1402). While Song’s physical revelation does appear to contradict the “feminine” identity he has established, Gallimard could just as easily be assessing his own problem. Gallimard’s struggle to create a totally new persona for himself and become a formidable man hinges on his ability to dominate another, but Song’s understanding of him turns Gallimard into the submissive figure. During the course of the play, Gallimard and Song virtually switch identities, each surprising the other by playing different roles in the fantasy they have created together. Because of their relationship (but not always through conscious choice), both characters become people quite different than who they were before their fantasy began, although their honesty about the changes in their relationship drives them apart rather than pulls them together.

Early in the play, the French diplomat Gallimard defines himself largely by his undesirable appearance and his awkwardness around women, viewing himself as a pathetic and powerless human being. His dissatisfaction with himself and his place in the world gives life to the fantasy of a perfectly submissive woman who would love him unconditionally. He believes his lack of cleverness and good looks ensures that no beautiful woman could ever love him, and this promise of a loveless future only makes him crave the fantasy more. Until he gets to China, his role in life has been the pitiful loser, disconnected from meaningful relationships and never confident or strong enough to establish them. His experiences with women are impersonal and lack intimacy. His first sexual encounter is orchestrated by his friend Marc, who pitied Gallimard’s inability to find a girl for himself. He marries Helga because her father’s connections can get him a good job, and he sees their marriage as one of practicality, not passion (1382). The pornographic magazines he discovers at a young age provide him with safe distance from a real relationship but preserve his connection to the beautiful ideal woman. Because the drab details of his life have begun to define him, Gallimard sees his first meeting with the beautiful Song, who he views as the stereotypical submissive Oriental woman, as an opportunity to change things. He can shake off his dull identity and finally become what he has always dreamed of being— a witty, popular lothario who makes women swoon. His real life has left him totally unsatisfied, so he jumps at the chance to embark on a fantasy affair.

True to his wishes, Gallimard begins a relationship with Song, but before getting deeply involved in it, he tests his ability to make his fantasy work and to change himself into this new person. After all, if Song does not become like a puppet to him, then he may have a woman, but he won’t have the power he so desperately wants. So he begins to see how far he can push Song, how mean and domineering he can be while still keeping her around. He bases his “experiment” on an idea from his favorite opera, Madame Butterfly— that a Western man will catch a butterfly and leave it writhing on the needle (1387). The minute Song shows herself vulnerable to him, Gallimard lets her think he has abandoned her, and he doesn’t give up until Song writes to him, “I can hide behind dignity no longer. What do you want? I have already given you my shame” (1388). At last he has discovered himself capable of breaking someone’s heart. His brief pang of guilt over stripping Song of her dignity subsides when he has been promoted to vice-consul because he has recently “become this new aggressive confident… thing” (1388). This act confirms for him that his relationship with Song has made him into the man he always wanted to be, and he throws himself into this new identity with gusto.

Gallimard allows his fantasy to overtake him entirely, especially in his affair with Song. Now that he has bona fide power, he can possess Song physically and emotionally. This enhanced connection comes with a complete disregard of Song’s feelings, since Gallimard, in becoming like Madame Butterfly’s newly masculine Pinkerton, can now equate his lover with Pinkerton’s submissive bride. When he comes to Song before they consummate their relationship, he asks her point-blank, “Are you my Butterfly?” (1389). During their first meeting, she told him she considered the role of Butterfly— indeed, the whole idea of Madame Butterfly— a degrading stereotype. In forcing her to say that she is his Butterfly, he takes from her the last piece of the individuality she displayed the night they met and claims her once and for all as a character in his fantasy. He begins referring to her exclusively as Butterfly and continuing to envision ways he could hurt her and still have her. His affair with Renee only excites him because he imagines Song crying and suffering in silence. He builds his life around the power he feels knowing that he can do whatever he pleases, and his destructive metamorphosis into a hateful cad comes to its climax one night after he has been shamed at work. To reinforce his bruised ego, he goes to Song and tries to take away the one thing he has let her have in their relationship— her modesty. He wants to take her over completely, to lose any vestiges of tenderness and sensitivity he may have had and become something almost to be feared. But his fantasy begins here to turn back on itself, a turning point which will be explored later.

Song’s identity is more of a mystery to the audience, revealed to us as it is revealed to Gallimard. He takes occasional breaks from narrating the course of his fantasy to parcel out information on Song’s true purpose, and these breaks provide clues as to the starting point of Song’s identity. Because we only see Song through Gallimard’s eyes, we have to piece together an image of how Song must have been before taking on his role as an actress before we can track the changes in his identity. The progression we see, where Song goes from “lotus blossom” to loutish bachelor, is probably more of a return to an old identity than it is an evolution to a new one, although Song does seem to change throughout the play.

Where Gallimard hopes to create an ideal life for himself by turning into a powerful man, Song hopes to aid his country by using his acting talents to appear as a weak-willed woman. Up until the moment of Gallimard’s greatest dominance, when he orders her to strip, Song’s role in the fantasy has been to create in himself a woman who will fulfill Gallimard’s every desire. His deep understanding of gender stereotypes assures that he will succeed in becoming the Perfect Woman. “Why, in the Peking Opera, are women’s roles played by men? … Because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act” (1395). Song’s statement reveals how he is able to so perfectly embody Gallimard’s fantasy— as a man, he understands what men want from a woman. More than this, he understands that what Gallimard wants is something he’s not likely to get from real women, especially not the relatively uninhibited Western women. Gallimard can only respect himself if he has a woman who does not have a mind of her own, whose only thought is of pleasing her man at all costs. Song begins creating himself in this false image by presenting himself as a conquest, speaking somewhat bitterly about Western stereotypes and setting up vague, intriguing engagements. In these early meetings, the last traces of what we can assume was “the old Song” (the acerbic male we meet in the courtroom in Act 3) start to disappear as he shapes himself into the submissive female. The combination of urbane talk and brief, clandestine meetings whets Gallimard’s appetite while making Song seem “outwardly bold and outspoken” with a “heart [that] is shy and afraid” (1386). After several weeks, once he is sure he has piqued Gallimard’s interest, Song does away with the boldness and starts casting himself as a nervous, inexperienced girl who feels inferior to— and needs the approval of— a Western man. In becoming completely devoid of the appearance of strength, Song actually hones his manipulative powers: the more Gallimard sees Song as his fantasy plaything, the less he will think of giving away military secrets. He never considers that Song could be intelligent or willful enough to betray him, which testifies to how well Song is playing the part. Song cements his role as loving female with one of his most impressive acts of manipulation— convincing Gallimard that he has gotten Song pregnant. When his wife begs him to see a doctor because she wants a baby, Gallimard tells Song he feels as though “God himself is laughing… if [he] can’t produce a child” (1392). He has encountered one of those familiar old challenges to his masculinity, and Song knows if he can take advantage of the situation, “He’ll be mine for life!” (1395). Song soothes Gallimard by acting as though the idea that he couldn’t produce a child is absurd. He tells Gallimard that he wants nothing more in the world than to have something of his growing inside, even if it means giving up a career he loves. In this way, Song promises Gallimard again that he will give up a part of his own identity to reinforce his lover’s.

The two move along in this way— Song subjecting himself to Gallimard as he finds himself growing ever more powerful— until the night an enraged Gallimard demands that Song reveal her whole body to him. That night their relationship changes, and both characters begin not only to slide back toward their original identities, but to begin trading the roles they have been playing. To all outward appearances, Gallimard is dominating Song until the moment he falls to his knees, begging Song’s forgiveness and for the first time becoming transformed by love and not by a desire for power. From that point, Song becomes more assertive, informing Gallimard of what she will do with their baby, staying away for an extended period of time, and eventually taunting Gallimard for unwittingly being in love with a man. Song no longer has to manipulate in secret— now both he and Gallimard know that Song is the dominant partner in the relationship. Song’s progression from submission to domination coincides with Gallimard’s own reversal. Gallimard recognizes the change in Song, admitting that her “drawing back at the moment of [his] capitulation” may have been her smartest move, but by this point he is so smitten that almost nothing she could do would change his feelings (1396). He has given up the need to control her and accepted that she’s changed him, not in the selfish way he originally intended, but in showing him the beauty of a loving relationship. When Song finds him in France after four years of separation and asks where his wife is, he replies, “She’s by my side. She’s by my side at last” (1399). Gallimard leaves behind his cad-like behavior, settling down and caring for Song during their years in France, even photographing classified documents for her without asking questions.

It seems as though Song and Gallimard are headed for a complete change of roles— indeed, by the end of the play, it is Gallimard and not Song who has assumed the title and role of Butterfly. They have each constructed an identity, lived a life of appealing lies, and become changed again— Gallimard into a sensitive lover with qualities he’s always thought of as “feminine” and Song into a man who uses glibness and confidence as weapons. These drastic and simultaneous transformations give the play a kind of symmetry, much like the butterfly that provides so much of the play’s imagery.

However, there is incompleteness to this symmetry. The characters do not entirely complete their transformations. Gallimard’s love is still based on a fantasy, which makes his emotions appear both strong and fragile at the same time. His feelings for the Song he knew run so deep that he can’t face life without them, but he can’t entertain the idea of pursuing a relationship based on reality. Song, for his part, cannot fully turn into what Gallimard was when they met— cold, detached, living a carefree fantasy. Too much of him has gone into the role he has played for 20 years, and regardless of how much of their relationship was based on artifice, deep feelings have passed between them that Song can’t quite bury. His final confrontation with Gallimard begins with cruelty, as he lords over his lover how easy it was to fool him all those years. But when Gallimard begins to laugh at the absurdity of having “wasted so much time on just a man,” Song becomes irate and claims he is much more than an ordinary man (1402). He makes several attempts to convince Gallimard to come with him and begin their life together anew, because “under the robes, beneath everything, it was always me” (1402). Song’s feelings for Gallimard go deeper than an actor relishing a good role— he has a connection with this man that he does not want to give up. The characters’ identities have become intermingled, and the inevitability of life apart is something neither of them can fully accept.

In the end, Gallimard and Song’s relationship does not die because of the great “shock” that inspired Hwang to write the play. Gallimard does not consider at length the implications of his lover being both a man and a spy— his heart is broken because his lover was a real person, not the Perfect Woman he had constructed in his mind. To Gallimard, Song committed the ultimate betrayal not by disguising his identity, but by ever having one in the first place and daring to tell the truth about it. Gender, culture, and politics may have shaped Gallimard’s and Song’s identities throughout the play, but all these things fall away in the face of a shattered fantasy. Once Song becomes a fullfledged human being and places the pin into his Butterfly, it does not take much writhing before his lover is dead.

Works Cited

Hwang, David Henry. “M. Butterfly.” Stages of Drama: Classical to Contemporary Theater.
Fifth Edition. Ed. Carl H. Klaus, Miriam Gilbert, and Bradford S. Field Jr.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003. 1378-1411.

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