37 pages • 1 hour read
Madame Butterfly
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Themes
Infidelity in Love and Faith
The conflict in Madam Butterfly revolves around the infidelity of the two lead characters. While Pinkerton is unfaithful in love, which is a common convention of tragic love stories, Butterfly leaves her family’s spiritual faith. Pinkerton never intends to be faithful to Butterfly, considering her a “Pearl” to be collected along with other “pearls”—wives—from other countries. He is reckless with her wellbeing, telling Sharpless that Butterfly’s “wings might, in the game, be broken” (73). Pinkerton views the love between him and women from other countries as merely a game of conquest that inherently includes infidelity. He only intends to be faithful in his marriage to another American. His fidelity will begin on his “real wedding day when [he] will / Marry a real wife from America” (74). This is a common attitude of white men in the early 1900s. Butterfly’s servant, Suzuki, says, “I never yet have / Heard of a foreign husband / Who did return to his nest” (98). She compares American men who abandon their foreign wives to birds who naturally return to their home of origin. In this way, the opera interrogates to whom and to what ideas an individual is faithful, and how such fidelity is informed by their values.
Pinkerton is only faithful to his idea of the American dream. He talks to Sharpless about this idea—being a Yankee who travels “The whole world over, on business or on pleasure [...] He casts his anchor wherever he chooses” (72). Pinkerton thinks about the world in terms of imperialism, or other countries existing to give him commodities, whether they be gemstones or child brides like Butterfly.
On the other hand, is Butterfly’s unwavering love for Pinkerton. She gives up her family’s faith for their relationship, a sign that she values romantic love above all else. This act causes her family to renounce her. Butterfly says, “They’ve renounced me, yet I’m happy” (92). As long as she has Pinkerton, she is happy. Her family not accepting her religious conversion for marriage causes her to characterize them negatively. Butterfly explains that the locks that Pinkerton purchased for the house “keep out / Those spiteful plagues, my relations” (98). Furthermore, Butterfly and Suzuki disagree on matters of faith. While Butterfly condemns Suzuki for praying to the “Gods of Japan” (97), Suzuki—unlike Butterfly’s family—supports and stands with Butterfly.
The fact that Butterfly’s sacrifice for Pinkerton—leaving her religion—does not affect his behavior is at the center of the tragedy. Her religious infidelity does not prevent Pinkerton’s marital infidelity. Not only does he marry an American, Kate, but Pinkerton also demands that Butterfly give him their son to be raised in America by Kate. Butterfly is cut off from all of her “blood relations [and] descendants” (71). She stops connecting with her ancestors, as part of leaving her faith, and the man she undergoes religious conversion for takes away her son.
The Power of Love and Fate
Butterfly’s religious infidelity is rooted in her ideas about the power of love and fate, which contrast heavily with Pinkerton’s conceptions of both. She tells him, “Now, beloved, / You are the world, more than the world to me. / Indeed, I loved you the very first moment / That I saw you” (94). Romantic love surpasses all else, including family and religion. Love is everything—the entire world—to Butterfly. This all-consuming love overpowered her the first time she met Pinkerton.
Pinkerton, on the other hand, is unsure if he feels lustful or loving toward Butterfly. His feelings, he admits to Sharpless, are undetermined and might be “True love or fancy, / I cannot tell you” (73). He lacks emotional intelligence or is unwilling to be overpowered by emotion. While looking at Butterfly on their wedding night, he says, “her charm is / So alluring, my heart / Is beating madly / With passionate longing” (92). This passion is obviously lust, but Pinkerton demands that Butterfly tell him she loves him. He says, “You still haven’t told me you love me” (92), and she eventually confesses that she loved him from the moment that she saw him. Although Pinkerton expects love from Butterfly, he has no expectations to experience those feelings himself for her. Unlike the fickle, insincere Pinkerton, Butterfly is devoted to the actions, not words, of love. She says she would be “Grateful for love that’s silent; / Light as a blossom / And yet everlasting / As the sky, as the fathomless ocean” (94). Like these natural elements, she believes love should be eternal.
Another powerful force that has a different role in the minds of the lead characters is fate. Pinkerton aims to be more powerful than fate: “Fate cannot crush” (72) the ideal American—the kind of American that he tries to be. Within the Italian literary tradition, fate is typically associated with old female weavers of Greek and Roman mythology (the Moirai or Parcae, respectively), and so Pinkerton’s attitude toward fate can be read in his attitudes toward women. Puccini also mentions the Japanese goddess of fate when Suzuki prays to “Izanami” (97). Like the women he encounters in various countries, Pinkerton plans to control fate.
Conversely, Butterfly feels like fate is a force that she must obey. When renouncing her family’s faith, she says, “My fate I have to follow” (84). Even though fate plays a significant role in her family’s religion and is ever-present in Suzuki’s prayers, Butterfly ultimately believes that her fate lies with Pinkerton, including his Christian religion of faith that generally abhors the concept of fate.
Cultural Conflict and Exotification
While the plot of Madam Butterfly does ultimately critique how an American navy officer wrongs a Japanese geisha, the play still contains elements of Orientalism. Orientalism is a practice of representing Asian people as “exotic” and often sexually desirable. These representations reflect colonial and imperialist stereotypes about Asian culture. This can be seen in how Butterfly is a teenage bride who Pinkerton purchases from Goro. She is a sexual object to be purchased, like a pearl, a “little orange blossom” (99), or exotic species of butterfly. Pinkerton admits that her concern that when men collect butterflies, they “pierce its heart with a needle” (95) holds “some truth” (95). He says, “You’re mine” (95), referring to her as a possession. Butterfly is part of Pinkerton’s collection of women from Eastern countries, which he refers to as pearls and butterflies.
Additionally, cultural conflict appears in how Butterfly views Americans as superior to Japanese people. When she kisses Pinkerton’s hand, she says, “They tell me / That abroad, where the people are more cultured, / This is a token of the highest honor” (91). She believes that people from the West are more culturally advanced, and after marrying an American, she declares that her country is “The United States” (103). Marrying an American is a means to obtain not only citizenship in the United States, but also a “superior” identity and culture. However, as Pinkerton never sees Butterfly as an American and thus doesn’t acknowledge her as his wife while he was in the United States. Rather, he expected that when he abandoned her, she would divorce him.
Butterfly also wants her son to be an American citizen. He takes after his father as “Rosy, a little blond baby / like the sun after the storm: the deep blue eyes” (114). Their similarity in features makes it clear to Sharpless that Pinkerton is the father. When she spots Pinkerton’s ship in the harbor, Butterfly “takes an American flag [...] and gives it to the child” (110). The flag is a strong symbol of how Butterfly wants her son to be American. In the end, she gives up her relationship with her son, and her life, to free him to go to the US with Pinkerton and Kate. Butterfly is willing to “sacrifice” (121) everything to ensure that her son leaves Japan. This shows how she considers America superior to Japan and has internalized the Western perpetuation of her identity as “exotic” and “inferior.”
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