Summary
Scene 11. Paris, 1968-1970.
Gallimard returns to Paris, where he is met with harassment from French Communists. Helga returns home wet one day, after getting caught in the fire of water cannons from policeman targeting at Communist students. She complains about the fact that Communism is taking off in France just as it did in China. Abruptly, Gallimard tells her he wants a divorce, revealing that he had a mistress in China for eight years.
Helga seems disappointed, telling Gallimard that she liked the pretense of their life in China. Before she leaves him, she says, "I hope everyone is mean to you for the rest of your life."
Marc enters and the two men drink. As Gallimard complains about the West and says he misses China, Marc tells him to get over it, before exiting. Gallimard says, "Why can't anyone understand? That in China, I once loved, and was loved by, very simply, the Perfect Woman?"
Song enters in a wedding dress, touching Gallimard, who can hardly believe she is real. As he goes to embrace her, she pulls away and requests that he let her take over narrator duties, while he goes and takes a break. She removes her makeup and the houselights come up.
Act 3. A courthouse in Paris 1986. When the stagelights come back up, Song has removed his wig and kimono and is wearing a suit. He tells the audience, "So I'd done my job better than I had a right to expect." He tells the audience that he found a tailor to make him a kimono, and that he was taken in by Gallimard with open arms. Gallimard supported him and their "son" for 15 years.
The time shifts to 1986, and Song is testifying in court. The actor playing Toulon plays a judge. Song tells the judge that Gallimard would photograph sensitive documents for Song, which Song would then pass on to the Chinese embassy. "He knew that I needed those documents, and that was enough," Song says. The judge then asks Song if Gallimard knew that Song was a man, and Song tells him that Gallimard never saw him naked, nor touched his body. Song then tells the judge that it was not hard to convince Gallimard that he was a woman, saying, "See, my mother was a prostitute along the Bund before the Revolution. And, uh, I think it's fair to say she learned a few things about Western men. So I borrowed her knowledge. In service to my country."
Song goes on to inform the judge that convincing Gallimard to fall in love with him was easy, as "Men always believe what they want to hear," and "As soon as a Western man comes into contact with the East—he's already confused." Song's assessment of the tension between Eastern and Western culture can be summated in his line, "You expect Oriental countries to submit to your guns, and you expect Oriental women to be submissive to your men. That's why you say they make the best wives."
The judge is not satisfied, calling Song's assessment an "armchair political theory" and asking Song again if Gallimard knew he was a man. "You know, Your Honor, I never asked," says Song simply.
Scene 2. Music from the "Death Scene" in Madame Butterfly plays. Gallimard comes onstage calling for Butterfly, as Song continues to testify, though we can longer hear him. Gallimard speaks to the audience about how duped he felt by Song, by the fact that Song's masculine identity was so different from his "Butterfly." Song addresses Gallimard and transports him back to the Chinese opera when they first met.
Song begins to dance as in the Chinese opera, taunting Gallimard about the fact that he still wants him, "even in slacks and a button-down collar." Teasing him, Song begins to remove his clothes. A cacophony plays over the speakers as Gallimard yells, "You're only in my mind! All this is in my mind! I order you! To stop!"
As Gallimard resists, Song teases him by subverting the Western rape fantasy that he described earlier, saying, "Your mouth says no, but your eyes say yes." Gallimard begs for Song to stop, saying that he imagines this every night, but Song usually stops when he wants him to. "I guess tonight is different," says Song.
As Song takes off his underwear, Gallimard begins to laugh hysterically. Song is confused as Gallimard tells him, "I just think it's ridiculously funny that I've wasted so much time on just a man!" Song insists that he isn't just a man, but Gallimard just laughs at him more, saying, "Isn't that what you've been trying to convince me of?...I think you must have some kind of identity problem."
Gallimard asks Song what he is, and Song picks up Butterfly's robes and dances. He then tells Gallimard to close his eyes and touch his skin. Gallimard tells Song that he has made a huge mistake, saying, "You showed me your true self. When all I loved was the lie. A perfect lie, which you let fall to the ground—and now, it's old and soiled."
Song is disappointed, hardly able to believe that Gallimard never loved him. "I'm a man who loved a woman created by a man. Everything else—simply falls short," says Gallimard, before telling Song to get out of his life. They insult each other, before Gallimard pushes Song offstage.
Scene 3. Gallimard's prison cell.
Gallimard narrates, "There is a vision of the Orient that I have. Of slender women in chong sams and kimonos who die for the love of unworthy foreign devils...Who take whatever punishment we give them, and bounce back, strengthened by love, unconditionally." As a dancer brings him a water basin, Gallimard begins to put makeup on. He tells us that while he has never admitted to the public that Song is a man, he knows that he is, but that he fell in love. He says, "Love warped my judgment, blinded my eyes, rearranged the very lines on my face...until I could look in the mirror and see nothing but...a woman."
Gallimard puts on the wig as the dancers hand him a knife. "Death with honor is better than life...life with dishonor," Gallimard says, quoting Madame Butterfly. He tells the audience that he is Madame Butterfly, before stabbing himself with the knife.
Song stares at Gallimard, dead on the floor, and smokes a cigarette, before saying, "Butterfly? Butterfly?"
Analysis
David Henry Hwang creates confusion between past and present, between memory and fact, by staging all of the events of the play proper as a retrospective patchwork of different narratives, constructed by Gallimard and his memory of Song. This becomes clear in the moment that Gallimard and Song are reunited in Paris; as Gallimard goes to embrace Song to represent their reunion, Song pulls away. He protests that he wants to show the audience how they embraced that evening, to which the stage memory of Song responds, "Rene, I've never done what you've said. Why should it be any different in your mind?" The character, figment, memory, projection, now becomes a full-blown character, and the use of the stage as a physical space allows playwright Hwang to create a more complex narrative mixing different temporalities, one without a reliable or authoritative author.
In this moment, the character of Song assumes the position of narrator for the first time. For the beginning of the play, Gallimard has been given full reign of the narrative, positioned as the central and most important voice. Song has appeared in his memories, added to the narration, participated in subtle ways, but never been given agency as a storyteller. Now she is allowed to tell her piece, and in this moment, she drops all of the pretenses of her female disguise and appears as a man onstage. David Henry Hwang even marks this shift in his stage directions, shifting the pronouns he uses to describe Song from female to male.
Song's narration coincides with the performance of his testimony in court. In this moment, Song is given the final word, and uses his time to theorize about the power dynamic between East and West, male and female. He describes the fact that "Men always believe what they want to hear," then that "the West has sort of an international rape mentality towards the East," and that "being Oriental, I could never be completely a man." The fantasy of love between Gallimard and Song worked precisely because of a broader cultural fantasy about Western domination of the East, which aligns with a male domination of women. In a matter-of-fact way, Song makes a case for how seamlessly her relationship with Gallimard could happen, citing broader sociopolitical and sexual dynamics that exceed her own seductive power.
After Song takes over the narrative, he becomes more than just an image or a memory in Gallimard's mind. He becomes an autonomous and powerful figure, who turns Gallimard's subjugation back on him. Gallimard begs Song to stop taunting him, insisting that he is not attracted to him in his male form, but Song teases him, taking off more and more clothing. Gallimard resists, saying, "Every night, you say you're going to strip, but then I beg you and you stop!" to which Song simply responds, "I guess tonight is different." Gallimard's worst nightmare is that he will be attracted to a man, and Song plays with this fear menacingly.
The play ends curiously. After Song reveals his biological sex, Gallimard responds with laughter and disbelief. He rejects Song, eschewing homosexuality in favor of loneliness, but holds on to his fantasy of Madame Butterfly, the perfect woman. Without Song, Gallimard finds Madame Butterfly in himself, and the play ends with him dressing himself up as the famous female character, and killing himself. While the reasons behind Gallimard's actions are left ambiguous, it seems that the end represents his realization that his desire to overpower the perfect submissive woman is in fact closely linked to his desire to become that submissive woman.
