An Analysis M.butterfly From The Perspective Of Post-Colonial Feminism

M.Butterfly is David Henry Hwang's masterpiece,and its genre is drama.The playwright's inspiration of this work was inspired by a piece of news in that time,a French diplomat who'd fallen in love with a Chinese actress,who subsequently turned out to be not only a spy,but a man.David Henty Hwang connected this news with the opera Madame Butterfly,and deconstructed it.This drama involves the themes of nation and race,East and West,gender and politics,identity and identification,colonization and post-colonization,and other essential cultural propositions.Most of these themes can be interpreted from the perspective of post-colonialism.What's more,because of the distinctive character— Song Liling—a man disguises as a woman,M.Butterfly also presents some feminism elements and ideas.However,in most of the domestic researches of M.Butterfly,they mostly focus on the perspectives of the deconstruction,post-colonialism,and others,but the researches of the feminism factors are less,not to mention the researches of the feminism viewpoints from the perspective of post-colonialism.This thesis will mainly analyze the points of views of feminism that presented in M.Butterfly from the perspective of post-colonialism.This thesis contains the following aspects.Chapter one gives a general introduction to David Henry Hwang and M.Butterfly.This chapter also presents the research purpose and the background of this thesis.Chapter two presents the research review of M.Butterfly and the relevant post-colonialism and feminism theories—the postcolonial feminism.This thesis analyzes the feminism viewpoints from the post-colonialism perspective,using the postcolonial feminism to interpret the work.Chapter three analyzes the post-colonialism theory.This paper mainly analyzes the contents of the postcolonialism embodied in M.Butterfly,such as marginalization,Orientalization and discourse subversion.Chapter four mainly analyzes another important content—feminism—in postcolonial feminism theory.This paper will analyze the stereotype of Oriental female,the “materialization”,and androgyny.Chapter five summarizes the thesis,and points out the theoretical and practical significance,as well as the limitations and future research directions.