Orientalism: Transcending Culture and Extending Towards Gender - POV
Western writers have long been producing popular stories about Americans living and interacting with Easterners. Among these stories are Madama Butterfly, an opera adapted by Giacomo Puccini, and Tales of the South Pacific, a series of related short stories written by James A. Michener. Surprisingly, both of these works centralize on an American officer falling in love with an Asian woman, but leaving her heart-broken and deserted. The West has dominance over the East, just as the male has power over the female. Orientals, just like women, are idealized to be beautiful, exotic, loving, and obedient, giving all and demanding nothing.
The protagonist in Madama Butterfly, Cio-Cio-San is fifteen years old – a childlike geisha. Pinkerton exploits the powerlessness of her youth, sex, poverty, and race as he alienates her from her Japanese family, religion, and language. However, in true Orientalist fashion, Cio-Cio-San does not utter a single word of protest or anger; she willingly gives up these things for him. In fact, Cio-Cio-San even takes on the new role of an American wife to accommodate her husband. She offers Sharpless, the consul who made marriage arrangements for the couple, American cigars and corrects him when he calls her Madame Butterfly; “nay,” she says, “Madame Pinkerton.”
When Pinkerton deserts her for three years, Cio-Cio-San still trusts that he would go back to her “with the roses, / The warm and sunny season / When the red-breasted robins Are busy nesting,” as he promised. Every Spring, she decorates the house to faithfully await his return, refusing to even consider the possibility that he has left her for good. Cio-Cio-San completely disregards the Japanese law that “For the wife desertion / gives the right of divorce” because to her, the United States is now her home country. There, she thinks, husbands are not free to leave their wives as they please; the “unbiass’d judge” will put them in prison for being “wicked scoundrel[s].”
In the end, even when she realizes that Pinkerton has married another woman, a real American wife, Cio-Cio-San not only agrees to give up her child to them, but also kills herself because of him. Her suicide to keep her honor is unreasonable because she still has other choices; many Japanese men want to marry her. Prince Yamadori, for instance, is rich, handsome, and royal. Yet, Cio-Cio-San refuses to even consider him, who, unlike Pinkerton, “would swear eternal faith” to her, because she does not “think it, for [she] know[s] it” that she is still married.
To Cio-Cio-San, Pinkerton is everything; thus, when he deserts her, he leaves her with nothing. Pinkerton, on the other hand, is “marrying in Japanese / fashion, tied for nine hundred / and ninety-nine /years! Free, though, to annul the marriage monthly!” Cio-Cio-San thinks their marriage is based on love, but only because she does not know the real him. Thus, her tragic fate was sealed from the beginning because Pinkerton never had any intensions of staying in Japan.
In Tales of the South Pacific, Lieutenant Joe Cable and his Oriental Tonkinese girl share a similar story. Liat, like Cio-Cio-San, is a quiet, young, beautiful girl. The two also have a language barrier, as Liat only speaks French while Cable only speaks English. Yet, somehow, he manages to ravish her. When Blood Mary, Liat’s mother, hands her over to Cable, she willingly embraces and accepts him as if being given to a strange man is perfectly normal. Liat is submissive, exotic, and erotic; the couple has sexual relations and fall in love.
At first, when Bloody Mary makes marriage arrangements for the couple, however, Cable does not accept. He cannot see himself, a White man, becoming the husband of an Oriental woman because they are of different statuses. Cable would not be able to bring Liat back to America without being shunned by his family and friends; she does not meet society’s expectations as a wife for him. He cannot risk his reputation and ideals, even though he finds “true love”. Soon after seeing Liat a few more times, though, Cable changes his mind. He comes to a sudden realization that everything he wants is with her; Cable decides to stay with her on Bali Ha’i and not go back to America.
This, of course, is a big taboo; no American should give up their life and settle down with a lowly Asian girl. Thus, Cable knowingly accepts a dangerous mission to go behind Japanese lines and spy on them. He claims that he loves Liat tremendously, but does not hesitate to think that he could lose her for good. Cable vows never to go back to his home country, but ironically, is willing to give up his life to win a war for America. Unsurprisingly, the Japanese discover Cable and kill him. Now he does not have to return to Liat and decide what to do with her. He does not have to continue choosing between his mind and his emotions. Liat is thus left heart-broken and without her lover, who gallantly sacrifices himself for a place he originally “renounces” for her.
In these two love stories, the Western white man wins over the Eastern Asian woman – the perfect stereotypical sexual and colonial fantasy. People view the world as having two unequal halves: the developing East and the developed West. The imbalance of power is apparent, as the West constructs the East as a place that is weak enough to conquer and rule, simply because the latter is seen as more “feminine” and the former as more “masculine.” Thus, as the Orients try to gain respectability and power in the world, women are forced to do the same in society.
Carissa Dech
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