Assignment 7 11/16

M Butterfly shows us the vast contrast between China and The Western world, but at the same time, it shows us that they are similar as well. In Act 1 scene 10 of the play, Song invites Gallimard to her apartment in France. As they talk, Song acts subservient and nervous around Gallimard. At one point she says, “France is a country living in the modern era….China is a nation whose soul is firmly rooted two thousand years in the past….I’m a Chinese girl…The forwardness of my actions makes my skin burn,”(pp. 29-31). She is explaining how China is still a country with strict rules about how men and women interact that run so deep, it is burnt into the culture. Song also talks about the strong and tough women of the west. If the two, the women of the west and the women of China, were compared, there would definitely be some differences, but there would also be similarities. The woman plays hostess, the woman cares for the home and also cares for the man, and the woman are supposed to be approached by the men. At the end of the play, as Song is standing before the judge, he says that the western world has a rape mentality and that a oriental man can’t really be a man because he’s oriental. In the scene where Song is revealing himself to Gallimard he uses the same line that he claims western men use on oriental women, “Your mouth says no, but your eyes say yes,” (p. 87). The stereotypes in this play are both upheld and broken. Gallimard only wants the subservient Chinese girl at his side, using her as he pleases, just as Song claimed to the judge, but in the end the roles have been reversed. Song is now the true man with the rape mentality and Gallimard has been converted into the will-less, helpless woman.