Madame Butterfly

The conflict in Madam Butterfly revolves around the infidelity of the two lead characters. While Pinkerton is unfaithful in love, which is a common convention of tragic love stories, Butterfly leaves her family’s spiritual faith. Pinkerton never intends to be faithful to Butterfly, considering her a “Pearl” to be collected along with other “pearls”—wives—from other countries. He is reckless with her wellbeing, telling Sharpless that Butterfly’s “wings might, in the game, be broken” (73). Pinkerton views the love between him and women from other countries as merely a game of conquest that inherently includes infidelity. He only intends to be faithful in his marriage to another American. His fidelity will begin on his “real wedding day when [he] will / Marry a real wife from America” (74). This is a common attitude of white men in the early 1900s. Butterfly’s servant, Suzuki, says, “I never yet have / Heard of a foreign husband / Who did return to his nest” (98). She compares American men who abandon their foreign wives to birds who naturally return to their home of origin. In this way, the opera interrogates to whom and to what ideas an individual is faithful, and how such fidelity is informed by their values.