37 pages • 1 hour read
Giacomo PucciniMadame Butterfly
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1904A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Flowers
Flowers are an important symbol throughout the opera and stand for love and beauty. When Butterfly sees Pinkerton’s ship in the harbor, she and Suzuki put all the flowers from the garden in the house. The mass of flowers shows Butterfly’s unwavering love for Pinkerton. Butterfly says, “Roses shall adorn / The threshold [...] Lilies and roses let us scatter [...] In handfuls let us scatter / Violets and mimosa / And sprays of sweetest roses, / Petals of every flower” (112). This listing of flowers alludes to another famous scene about a scorned woman scattering flowers—Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, who also talks specifically about violets. Both Ophelia and Butterfly have scenes with flowers before dying by suicide and, in this way, Butterfly’s suicide is further romanticized.
Butterfly is compared to flowers repeatedly, often through the use of simile (comparison), which serves to emphasize her beauty and innocence. Several similes compare the white color of clothes, flowers, and snow. On their wedding night, Pinkerton notes how Butterfly is “dressed in white like a lily” (92), and when Butterfly and Suzuki decorate the house in flowers in preparation for Pinkerton’s return, Butterfly says, “Shake that cherry tree till every flower / White as snow, flutters down” (110). Butterfly’s lily-white dress is intended to emphasize her innocence and guilelessness as she enters her marriage, and the cherry blossom—a flower typically associated with Japan—re-establishes her faithfulness during Pinkerton’s absence. She metaphorically decorates her home with blossoms that symbolize how undeserving she is of Pinkerton’s callousness.
She wears flowers to accent her beauty. For instance, Suzuki also places a “Scarlet poppy” (114) in “Butterfly’s hair” (114) when they prepare for Pinkerton’s return. Furthermore, Butterfly passes down this floral beauty to their son and says to her son that, in him, her beauty will live on: “[The] last bloom of my beauty has not been wholly wasted” (125). Butterfly’s beauty—a flower—blossoms in her child and will continue to do so after her death.
Screens
In addition to flowers, Butterfly is also compared to the illustration on a sliding screen. Pinkerton says, “She seems to have stepped down straight from a screen” (73). Screens are symbols of delicacy and beauty and Butterfly embodies both qualities. The screens in the house are moved at key moments in the opera, often marking moments of intimacy. On Butterfly and Pinkerton’s wedding night, the “servants silently slide several partitions along” (91), to give the couple privacy. This initial moment of sexual intimacy is later referenced at Butterfly’s death by suicide. She wants less light to be let into the house, and “Suzuki goes to shut the screens so that the room is almost in total darkness” (123). At the end, Butterfly mortally injures herself behind the screen, where it cannot be seen, and covers her wound with the white veil behind the screen. The privacy of the screen here represents a space where Butterfly can cut her connection to her life—sacrifice her life for the life of her son, who was conceived behind the same screen.
Dagger
The dagger that Butterfly uses in her suicide, her father’s dagger, is also symbolic. It symbolizes his sacrifice for the honor of his family. Butterfly also sacrifices herself for her family—her son. On the dagger is engraved “Death with honour / Is better than life with dishonour” (124). While the emperor ordered Butterfly’s father to die by suicide, dictating what was honorable, Butterfly has to determine what is dishonorable in her life. Like her father, she places her child above herself. She thinks that her son will have a better life in America, and the dagger represents her sacrifice for him.
Moon
Another symbol in Madam Butterfly is the moon. On their wedding night, Butterfly and Pinkerton discuss how she is a lunar goddess. Butterfly says, “I come like / The Moon’s little Goddess, / The little Moon Goddess who comes down by night from / Her bridge in a sky full of stars” (92). As with the discussion of fate, Puccini alludes to Western mythology, such as the Greek/Roman goddesses Selene and Luna. There are moon goddesses in Eastern mythologies, like the Chinese Chang E, but the moon deity in Japanese mythology, Tsukuyomi, is male. The masculine mythological moon is seen in how Butterfly describes the moon in relation to her son. She says, “Around your head / The moonbeams dart: / Sleep, my beloved!” (115) to her child. He is adjacent to the moon in this lullaby. The moon is notable the night he is conceived, and the phases of the moon are often associated with menstruation and ovulation.
