Butterfly David Henry Hwang's Play Term Paper

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She knew the secret I was trying to hide. but, unlike a Western woman, she didn't confront me, threaten, even pout. (Hwang 519)

Song also expresses how Gallimard has viewed her and her country when the says to the judge,

The West thinks of itself as masculine -- big guns, big industry, big money -- so the East is feminine -- weak, delicate, poor... But good at art, and full of inscrutable wisdom -- the feminine mystique. (Hwang 531)

Hwang uses the excesses of the operatic world as a beginning point for a play about two people who themselves are playing a part in life, a part derived from an opera that embodies a false, but for some comforting, image.

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Gallimard believes in an image, and Song knows this and so presents that image. Gallimard is a man who has failed with Western women and who sees Asian women as submissive and probably inferior, so he is willing to participate in the illusion Song creates for him. As one critic notes, "The great irony of his story -- and the great success of Hwang's play -- is that Gallimard is telling us his story from a cell in a French prison, where he's serving time for treason" (Jones para. 12). Indeed, the true reversal in this play is that Gallimard is really Butterfly, not the male but the female, with Song the truly dominant figure in this relationship......

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