M. Butterfly

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual content, gender discrimination, racism, emotional abuse, suicidal ideation, and death by suicide.

“GALLIMARD: Alone in this cell, I sit night after night, watching our story play through my head, always searching for a new ending, one which redeems my honor, where she returns at last to my arms. And I imagine you—my ideal audience—who come to understand and even, perhaps just a little, to envy me.”

This passage represents Gallimard’s intent for the play. He willingly commits to retelling his story if only to get the audience on his side. His openness to the possibility that the audience might even envy him, despite his incarceration and public humiliation, hints at his arrogance, which is one of Gallimard’s key character traits.

“GALLIMARD: But as she glides past him, beautiful, laughing softly behind her fan, don’t we who are men sigh with hope? We, who are not handsome, nor brave, nor powerful, yet somehow believe, like Pinkerton, that we deserve a Butterfly.”

Gallimard explains why he idealizes the plot of the opera Madame Butterfly. He views himself as someone so undesirable that it fills him with hope to think that Pinkerton, whom the opera similarly characterizes as undesirable, could enter the kind of romance he does with Butterfly. Gallimard’s low self-esteem is one of his biggest character flaws, driving him to accept the illusion of Song’s love as reality.

“GALLIMARD: Of her death. It’s a…a pure sacrifice. He’s unworthy, but what can she do? She loves him…so much. It’s a very beautiful story.

SONG: Well, yes, to a Westerner.

GALLIMARD: Excuse me?

SONG: It’s one of your favorite fantasies, isn’t it? The submissive Oriental woman and the cruel white man.”

Gallimard’s first encounter with Song shatters his fantasy while also giving Song the first impression of the fantasy she can use to ensnare him in her espionage operations. Gallimard is uncritical of Pinkerton and Butterfly’s romance because he sees and idealizes himself in Pinkerton’s shoes. Song, conversely, understands the opera’s flaws at once because of how it disenfranchises her as an Asian person.