What we’ll be comparing and contrasting in this essay are seemingly very different stories about different aspects of life. One is seemingly just talking about a homosexual love affair amidst conservative societies, and the other is seemingly just talking about how crazy our human conditions living can get. David Henry Hwang’s M Butterfly and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse five are really different on the outside, and some may find it difficult to find similarities and difference from these two masterpieces.But we may be surprised to discover that if we set a guiding framework to give us focus in comparing and contrasting, we can see that these two very different stories can work well together. Although not implicitly, both M Butterfly and Slaughterhouse five can provide good arguments in the topic of views about women, may it be neutral views or discriminatory. David Henry Hwang’s critically acclaimed play M Butterfly is basically about a story of a French civil servant who falls in love with a Chinese singer.
One may think that this M Butterfly is just the common Westerner falls for Easterner love story, but no.The main catch of the story is that the Chinese opera singer is actually a man. That complication is what kept the story moving forward, plus the revelation that the Chinese opera singer was also a Chinese spy. Women were portrayed in M. Butterfly as a representation of the East.
A handful of stereotypes will arise from the story such as women should be submissive to men, just like the how the East should be submissive to the West. The play had spoken itself that “the Orient shall always bow to a much stronger force [West]” (Hwang)Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse five, considered a classic by many, is basically about how people relate and act with one another during the times of World War II. Since it was about relations and actions of people towards one another, it can’t be helped that women will also be discussed. Women in the Slaughterhouse five were mostly treated as materialistic and uneducated, and as mere sex objects.
Throughout the novel, there were numerous instances of lines that could well be offensive to women. There were lines talking about how women were creating the weapons instead of dismantling them (Vonnegut, 74-75).For me, I find it hard to discern the real intentions of Kurt Vonnegut about the women in his novel, that is because he known to be employing the writing technique dark comedy, which is known to naturally generate offense. To support the argument of this essay about the discrimination against women, this essay will employ what psychoanalytical theorist Joan Riviere had said. She had said that a number of case studies conclude that even high-achieving women are suffering from the same stereotypes that are present in the two stories that this essay had briefly discussed.Just like most women, they would also suffer from stereotypes such as being submissive at the least, or pretending to be stupid at worst.
She had said that it was due to the fact that most women fear that the men around her will be intimidated if she would excel. Maybe it’s because even the women generate the same stereotypes that are targeted against them. (Riviere) All in all, it is much easier to compare and contrast the whole of society and the whole of literature as opposed to two books. The society and literature are simply male dominated worlds that are agreed by everyone, unfortunately, even the women.
