Variations in Image, Gender, and Power: A Study of Madame Butterfly and M. Butterfly from the Perspective of the Variation Theory of Comparative Literature

The famous Italian composer Giacomo Puccini wrote the opera Madama Butterfly in 1904, which is widely circulated today. M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang which is embedded in the former is a variation of Madame Butterfly, full of political metaphors. This paper uses the theory of variation to analyze the “Butterfly image” in the eyes of Westerners as “otherness”, discusses how and why the changes between the two, and reveals the hidden sexism and Western-centrism.