Madame Butterfly

The second act develops the theme of Infidelity in Love and Faith. Pinkerton’s plans to marry an American wife and betray his marriage to Butterfly come to fruition in the years between the acts and Butterfly is notable in her denial of Pinkerton’s offstage “heartless action” (118). Goro and Yamadori say, “She thinks she is still married” (103). Sharpless points out that he tried to change Pinkerton’s mind about infidelity earlier, in Act 1. He foresaw that “Blindly trusting to your promise, / Her heart will break” (118). Ultimately, Butterfly’s intense fidelity to Pinkerton, which prevents her from even imagining a life apart from him creates anxiety in a host of other characters. As Pinkerton continues to detach from Butterfly, she clings ever more urgently to him, and the supporting cast—especially Sharpless and Suzuki—devote more attention to her behavior. It seems that the more unfaithful Pinkerton is to Butterfly, the more faithfulness she inspires in others for her. One theme informs the other—infidelity is connected to The Power of Love and Fate. Butterfly’s death occurs because her love is not returned—unrequited love has power over her.

The Power of Love and Fate pertains to family as well as marriage, as Butterfly does not keep her family’s faith. When Suzuki prays, Butterfly insists that “The Gods of Japan / Are uncaring and lazy! / The God my husband prays to will give an answer / Far more quickly to those who bow before him” (97). She believes her conversion to Christianity will cause Pinkerton to be faithful to her. However, this religious action does not prevent Pinkerton from engaging in romantic infidelity. Butterfly’s religious infidelity leaves her without a husband and without a family. Goro explains that “all her relatives / Have finally renounced her” (102) between Acts 1 and 2. Pinkerton also wants to take their son away from Butterfly. The loss of all love—romantic and familial—motivates Butterfly to die by suicide.

The symbolism and motif of flowers expand in Act 2 to develop the themes of The Power of Love and Fate and Infidelity in Love and Faith. When trying to demonstrate her love to Pinkerton, Butterfly has Suzuki fill the house with flowers. “Every flower. Peaches, violets, jessamine, / Every branch of cherry blossom, every flowering tree” (111) is brought inside and put on display when Pinkerton’s ship is seen in the harbor. Flowers also appeared in Pinkerton’s false claim that he would return to Butterfly years prior. He promised to “return in the springtime, / The warm and sunny season / When the flowers are in blossom and robins are nesting” (98). In this way, flowers highlight the nature of love within the associated characters. Butterfly’s love is abundant and intentional, whereas Pinkerton’s is subject to change, even seasonal.

However, Pinkerton doesn’t return during the spring that follows their wedding, nor the one after. The flowers represent both the beauty of Butterfly’s love and the temporariness of Pinkerton’s interest. When he sees the symbol of her enduring faithfulness and affection, he says, “Oh! The bitter fragrance / Of these flowers” (117). He does not want to be confronted with her love that she has nurtured like a garden in his absence. Rather, like a flower that withers with neglect, he hoped Butterfly would simply disappear. It is a bitter truth to him that she still loves him and wants to be his wife because he does not have the same feelings about her.

The issue of beauty is complicated in Act 2. Just as flowers symbolized beauty in Act 1, they also symbolize beauty in Act 2, but that beauty is extended beyond women and Butterfly specifically to include Butterfly’s son. The audience learns that Pinkerton’s nickname for Butterfly during their courtship was a flower: “My little orange blossom” (99). Butterfly passes down this expression of affection to her son and refers to him as “My dearest treasure. / Fairest flower of beauty” (124). In this way, however, Butterfly exoticizes her son, just as she has been exoticized by Pinkerton. But the child illustrates the complexity of Cultural Conflict and Exotification in his diverse racial identity. Their son takes after both his parents. He is not only described as carrying on Butterfly’s beauty, but also as looking whiter than she does. Butterfly says, “No Japanese / Boy was ever born with eyes as blue as these are. / Such lips too? And such a head of / Golden ringlets?” (107). The blue eyes and blond hair are evidence that Pinkerton is the boy’s father and markers of Western preferences for beauty and makes Pinkerton want him, just as he wanted Butterfly—as an “exotic prize.”

At the heart of the Cultural Conflict and Exotification between Butterfly and Pinkerton is Butterfly’s desire for her and her son to be changed by Pinkerton’s love and marriage. She wants to be an American and wants her son to be an American. The opera depicts her desire for citizenship as a kind of submission stereotyped in Asian women and eroticized by white Western culture. The Asian woman stereotype comes to represent the “ideal woman” who will sacrifice her very identity to her (white) husband. Butterfly demonstrates her desire for her son to be an American when she “takes a little American flag from among various toys [...] and gives it to the child” (110). Butterfly so idealizes Americanness over her Japanese identity that she is willing to give up her child; the cost of her son’s access to the privileges of American citizenship is her life, and she willingly pays.

The Japanese cultural practice of ritual suicide (seppuku) is also exotified, or romanticized, in Madam Butterfly. Butterfly’s father performed seppuku at the request of the emperor, and Butterfly uses the same short blade, or dagger, as her father when she dies by suicide at the end of the opera. It is her belief, and her father’s belief, that “death were better far than such dishonor” (108), which references how samurai could perform seppuku to restore honor to their families. Usually, people who perform seppuku are assisted in the process of dying, but unlike her father, and most participants in the act of ritual suicide, Butterfly takes her own life without the support of her community. Rather, her act is in opposition to the suggestion that she follow the terms of the marriage contract and seek divorce after being abandoned by a husband. She claims to not want divorce because it is not condoned in America, and her marriage to an American changed her nationality. 

The symbol of the screen appears again during the act of suicide. The audience and Butterfly’s son are shielded from seeing her take her own life by the screen, and she prepares for suicide by tossing a white veil from the shrine “across the screen” (124). Rather than representing the delicate beauty of the house or Butterfly herself, the screen comes to represent the delicate, or discreet, handling of suicide, as well as the delicate state of human life.

As in the previous act, similes are often used to link women and nature. Suzuki notes that Butterfly’s “little fluttering heart is beating / Like a terrified bird in a cage” (123). This observation can be compared to Pinkerton’s reference to her as a squirrel. Specifically, similes are used in conjunction with the symbolism of flowers. When telling Suzuki to put flowers all around the house as a symbol of her unwavering love for Pinkerton, Butterfly says, “Flowers, flowers, yes, everywhere / As close as stars are in the heavens” (111). This simile compares the excessive number of flowers to the uncountable number of stars in the night sky.