The plot of M. Butterfly is as follows: René Gallimard is a French diplomat who falls in love with a Chinese opera star while on duty in Beijing. Her name is Song Liling. She is caught between two worlds: a two-thousand-year-old Oriental tradition of modesty and servility to a dominant male and a Western education of individualism. She appears to fall for Gallimard, but soon it is discovered that the real reason for their relationship is that Song is a Chinese spy who has been assigned to Gallimard. To complicate the plot interestingly, Song actually does fall in love with Gallimard after a short while and they stay together for over twenty years.
The ironic climax of the play occurs when Song reveals her true self about her to Gallimard when she strips naked in front of him: Song is a man in drag. Gallimard never knew this because Song never allowed him to see her naked, even while performing intercourse. At the end however, Gallimard, too, forces himself to be vulnerable and realize the new truth. In his final monologue, Gallimard admits that:
"the truth demands a sacrifice. For mistakes made over the course of a lifetime. My mistakes were simple and absolute- the man I loved was a cad, a bounder. He deserved nothing but a kick in the behind, and instead I gave him… all my love.
Yes- love. Why not admit it all? That was my undoing, wasn’t it? Love warped in judgement, blinded my eyes, rearranged the very lines on my face… until I could look into the mirror and see nothing but... a woman…
The love of a Butterfly can withstand many things- unfaithfulness, loss, even abandonment. But how can it face the one sin that implies all others? The devastating knowledge that, underneath it all, the object of her love was nothing more, nothing less than… a man. It is 1988. And I have found her at last. In a prison on the outskirts of Paris. My name is René Gallimard- also known as Madame Butterfly. (M. Butterfly, 68)."
At this point, Gallimard commits suicide with his revelation that it is not only Song Liling that is fooling him, but it is also he who has been playing charades.
I believe that Addie and Anse had the same sort of relationship in As I Lay Dying. Addie was clearly not a woman who loved or would receive love given to her. In fact, she lived to hate, as a way of preparing for death. In her only chapter in the novel, she describes that:
I could just remember how my father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead for a long time. And when I would have to look at them day after day, each with his or her secret and selfish thought, and blood strange to each other blood and strange to mine, and think that this seemed to be the only way I could get ready to stay dead, I would hate my father for having ever planted me. I would look forward to the times when they faulted, so I would whip them. When the switch fell I could feel it upon my flesh; when it welted and ridged it was my blood that ran, and I would think with each blow of the switch: Now you are aware of me! Now I am something in your secret and selfish life, who have marked your blood with my own for ever and ever. And so I took Anse." (As I Lay Dying, 169-70).
Is this the type of woman that can love and be loved? Certainly not! While most human beings require love to function, Addie is masochist and needs rather the absence thereof. In fact, she speaks of Anse as if he is someone who will give her no love, later she gives testimony that the reality is quite different:
"He had a word, too. Love, he called it. But I had been used to words for a long time. I knew that that word was like the others; just a shape to fill a lack; that when the right time came, you wouldn’t need a word for that anymore than for pride or fear. Cash did not need to say it to me nor I to him, and I would say, Let Anse use it, if he wants to. So that it was Anse or love; love or Anse; it didn’t matter. (p. 172)
Despite her hatred, Anse saw Addie as a woman who would love him unconditionally and he created a fantasy world around his illusion. Only in mourning for Addie does he realize what he has done to himself.
I have shown that the relationship between Anse and Addie in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying are similar to that of René Gallimard and Song Liling in that both relationships were comprised of fantasy and only when forced did the components realize that they had been leading themselves on.
