Madam Butterfly: tragic figure of Masochism and Melancholy

Abstract

By their textual and musical dramaturgy, operatic mises en scene offer a perfect view of the conflicts inherent in human nature. The passions of Madam Butterfly - the eponymous opera of G. Puccini - foment a tragic fate that is paradigmatic of masochism and melancholy. This remarkable opera offers avenues for figuration and identification that can help inform psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in their understanding and treatment of patients with extreme psychical organisations, where neither loss and separation nor ambivalence (which links together love and hate) can be elaborated. Having recalled the bases of the dialogue between psychoanalysis and cultural productions and introduced the story of Madam Butterfly and the figures making up the narrative, the article proposes to examine the cathectic process at work. Through the many twists and turns in her story, Madam Butterfly is seen to invest in Pinkerton, irremediably sealing her fate as a young wife. The Butterfly figure is a perfect illustration of the different forms of masochism, of passiveness and the snare of melancholy. These movements highlight the intensity of the narcissistic challenges so strongly expressed through the confrontation with the loss of the object. Butterfly cannot mobilise any form of ambivalence towards Pinkerton. Only such ambivalence would, however, in the recognition of otherness, have afforded her the means to survive the admittedly painful openness to the reality of loss. She offers and abandons herself to the one who derives pleasure from breaking her butterfly wings, stubbornly refusing to turn to any other person for succour, irremediably sealing her fate for eternity.