Gender Identity in M.

Butterfly

Ruth Gebremedhin

In David Henry Hwang’s 1988 play M. Butterfly, we see Rene Gallimard, a French
diplomat, become enticed by the graceful and delicate Chinese opera singer Song Liling. For
Galllimard, Song is the perfect woman as she embodies his fantasy of a slender and
submissive oriental woman. Gallimard sees Song as his “Butterfly”, just like Cio-Cio San
(Japanese for butterfly) from Puccini’s famous opera Madama Butterfly. Unaware of the fact
that Song is a spy, Gallimard starts an affair with her that lasts for twenty years. During these
years, Song passes classified information she collected from Gallimard to the Chinese
government. The play reaches its astonishing climax when it is revealed that Song is not a
woman but a man. Song strips his feminine attire right in front of the audience. He washes off
his makeup, removes his wig and takes off his kimono. Underneath he wears a well-cut
Armani suit. Song not only sheds his feminine clothing but also his feminine mannerisms. He
becomes a man. Through Song’s seamless transformation, M. Butterfly presents fluid gender
identities through gender performance and shifting power dynamics, subverting the notion of
fixed binary gender identities.

Song’s on-stage transformation gives the audience a unique opportunity that allows
them to witness gender performance. In her essay “Performative Acts and Gender”, Judith
Butler notes that “gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various
acts proceed; rather it is an identity tenuously constituted in time- an identity instituted
through a stylized repetition of acts” (519). Butler claims that there is not any inner truth to
gender identity -- there isn’t any innate force that compels a person to act a certain way.
Instead, it is the very combination of acts and performances a person presents that constitute
and make up their gender identity. During his/her transformation, Song stops presenting
his/her shy, delicate and modest characteristics – the repetition of acts that defined him as a
woman. He then starts performing the series of acts that define him as a man. He becomes
confident, sarcastic, and almost arrogant. He d`oes this with complete attention from the
audience as he is the only one on stage. In addition, he lets the audience experience the
transformation, as s/he does not disappear from stage as a woman and appear again as a man.
Without any display of his biological sex, Song shows a series of acts and becomes a man.

M. Butterfly demonstrates Butler’s theory as it shows Song successfully enact a

woman even though he is biologically a man. As the play follows Gallimard’s narration in the
first acts, he portrays Song Liling as a woman. Gallimard refers to the character as a “she”,
even though he is narrating the story after he found out that Song Liling is a man. According
to Butler, this is not surprising since Song was successful in performing not only as a woman,
but a perfect Oriental woman. Song, at least throughout the first part of the play,
accomplishes the series of acts required to pass as a woman. In one of the intimate moments
in the play, Song says “Please … it all frightens me. I am a modest Chinese girl” (Hwang 34)
and asks Gallimard to let her keep her clothing. In this scene, Song performs the demure little
woman -- inferior, frightened, and in need of Gallimard’s permission to keep her clothes on.
S/he perfectly fits Gallimard’s criterion as she is not “too uninhibited, too willing, so as to
seem almost too masculine” (43). For Gallimard, Song’s unwillingness to be naked reinforces
her femininity, as modesty is an attributethat defines his perfect Oriental woman. In addition,
Song refers to her/himself specifically as a “Chinese girl”, which makes him/her inferior. As
 a French diplomat to China, Gallimard has a positional superiority just because he is a
Westerner. Song points this out and boosts Gallimard’s perception of his power status and his
masculinity. In another scene, Song says “Rene, … know that my love is enough, that I
submit – submit to the worst you can give me” ( 47). In this scene, Song explicitly “submits”
as the inferior, reaffirming Gallimard’s assumptions that he is more powerful. S/he gives him
“the rush of power – the absolute power of a man” (28). Song’s submission makes Gallimard
feel that he is the absolute man as he has power over this perfect woman. In both of these
scenes, and throughout the first two acts, Song is a woman since s/he shows a collection of
acts that fulfill the societal expectations of being a woman.

The power dynamics between Song and Gallimard changes after Song completes his
transformation. Song no longer acts shy or inferior. In fact, he quite confidently recounts the
story of his affair with Gallimard to the courtroom. He says “So I’d done my job better than I
had a right to expect” (60), proudly taking credit for his espionage. He tells the judge and the
courtroom his side of the story -- how he was successful in duping Gallimard into thinking he
is a woman for twenty years. When the judge is flustered because he does not know how to
put his questions without embarrassing himself, Song retorts “put it however you like. I am
not shy” (61). Song’s confidence is quite apparent in his spoken manner. However, the
biggest change we see after Song’s transformation is the change in the narrator. Until Song’s
transformation, Gallimard narrates the play. However, Song takes control of the play’s
narrative when s/he starts transforming. This is important because narrators have the power to
create space for their identities. As Karen Shimakawa notes in “‘Who’s to Say?’ Making
Space for Gender,” “Marginalized subjects who don’t have a position of authority adapt
themselves within, between and around the spaces defined by others” (350). Shimakawa uses
Baudrillard’s theory of post-modernism to define space as the area between “One” and “The
Other” that is used to define the boundaries that mark one’s identity. Hence a person, with a
power to do so, is able to shape and define his or her own space (identity). However,
according to Shimakawa, this action also determines the identity of those who are not in
power as they are forced into the space not occupied by the powerful. In relation to gender,
this means that by defining himself, the man as the more powerful gender decides what the
woman is and is not.

In the context of M. Butterfly, Gallimard creates his space and identity by narrating
the story. We see his “vison of the Orient” and his “vision of slender women in chongsams
and kimonos” (Hwang 68). We see his fantasy that reduces the Orient into Oriental women in
kimonos who are willing to die for a Western man’s love. However, as Shimakawa notes,
Gallimard loses his “authorial control over his story when Song disobeys his directions”
(351). Gallimard loses his position as the narrator when Song takes control of the
narration/story during their reunification in Paris. Here we see the power dynamics between
them change.

GALLIMARD: You have to do what I say! I’m conjuring you up in my mind!

SONG: Rene, I’ve never done what you have said. Why should it be any different in your mind?
Now split – the story moves on and I must change. (Hwang 59)

Song’s comment that s/he has never done what Gallimard said exposes that Song was the
more powerful one all along. We now see that Song accomplished a series of acts that
Gallimard fantasizes and perceives as the acts of “the perfect woman” in order to use him to
spy for the Chinese government. Song’s subtle power over Gallimard becomes explicit when
 s/he takes complete control of the narrative. Instead, s/he announces that the story has to
move on and that s/he must change. Through this scene, Song gains control of his space
hence gaining the power to define his and Gallimard’s identity. After this scene, Song washes
off her/his makeup, and transforms into a man wearing a well-cut suit. Following this, Song
exhibits his power by calling Gallimard “his little one” and says, “You know something,
Rene? Your mouth says no, but your eyes say yes” (Hwang 65) -- the exact same words Song
used earlier to describe the Western’s man rape mentality towards the Oriental woman. This
rape mentality is belief that deep down, Oriental women want to be dominated by Western
men. Song repeats these words but in a different context. S/he, an Oriental “woman” says it
to a Western man. Through this reversal of context, the play shows a reversal of power
dynamics. Song is no longer inferior, hence no longer a woman because “to be a woman is,
by definition, to be in an oppressed situation” (Butler 523). To be a woman is to be weak and
controlled. Therefore, what makes Song a man is not his biological essence but his power
status and his accomplishment in performing acts that conform to the social definition of a
man.

Song’s transformation also raises the question of true inner identity. As Dorinne K.
Kondo notes in her essay, “‘M. Butterfly’: Orientalism, Gender, and a Critique of Essentialist
Identity”, Hwang suggests that ‘woman’ is a collection of cultural stereotypes connected
tenuously at best to a complex, shifting ‘reality’. Rather than expressing some essential
gender identity, full and present, ‘woman’ is a named location in a changing matrix of power
relations” (Kondo 18). According to Kondo, womanhood and gender identity is not innate or
biological, but rather a position in changing power relations, where the less powerful is the
woman. In M. Butterfly, we see that Song first occupied the apparent position of the weaker,
the position of a woman. However, after Song’s transformation we see Gallimard becoming
weaker and occupying this position. Gallimard realizes that what he loved was “a perfect lie”
(Hwang 66), a fantasy that Song personified, but refuses to continue. Unable to accept this
realization, Gallimard chooses to embody the Butterfly fantasy in order to save it. He declares
“My name is Rene Gallimard – also known as Madame Butterfly” (69) and sacrifices himself
for the love of an unworthy man. He becomes Butterfly, a woman. The play ends with Song
uttering the words “Butterfly? Butterfly?” (69) while looking at Gallimard – the exact words
Gallimard uttered while looking at Song at the beginning of the play. The parallel wording
marks a complete reversal.

The astonishing gender and power reversals throughout the play make the audience
rethink their conceptualization of gender identity. The play not only disconnects gender from
sex, but also breaks the notion that there are only two genders/sexes. It implies that gender is
a spectrum created by different combinations of different acts—acts that are constantly
affected by changing power dynamics. This prompts questions as it challenges and subverts
one of our fundamental social constructs—gender identity. M. Butterfly prompts us to ask
what it means to re-conceptualize gender identity as gender identity affects many of our daily
interactions, economic decisions and political actions.

Works Cited

Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and
Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal, vol. 40. no. 4, 1988, pp 519-531.
Hwang, David Henry. M. Butterfly. Dramatists Play Service Inc, 1988.
Kondo, Dorinne K. “M. Butterfly: Orientalism, Gender, and a Critique of Essentialist Identity.”
Cultural Critique vol.16, 1990, pp.5-29.
Shimakawa, Karen. “‘Who's to Say?’ or, Making Space for Gender and Ethnicity in ‘M.
Butterfly.’” Theatre Journal, vol. 45 no. 3, 1993, pp. 349-362.