Exoticism, Fin de Siècle, and Representation of Asian Women in Late Nineteenth-Century Western Culture: Pierre Loti’s Madame Chrysanthème
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This article is a study of the origin and the historical development of the Madame Butterfly narrative as the dominant representation of Asian women in Western culture, which was part of the cultural apparatus of nineteenth-century exoticism and fin-de-siècle. The popular Western opera’s favorite theme about the East, the interracial romance, found its origin in the French operas Lakmé and Madame Chrysanthème. Pierre Loti’s romance novel, Madame Chrysanthème (1887), is the progenitor of the Butterfly narrative as it is a tragic romance between a white man and an Asian woman. Nominally, the center of the travelogue is a firsthand look at different people and customs. However, the reality of the Eastern locale did not concern Loti, who associated the exotic with escape, and this phenomenon applied to his racial and sexual preconceptions as well. In this regard, the real protagonist in Loti’s novels is himself, a man who uses Asian women as a means of self-aggrandizement. Several biographers and Loti scholars have written that the writer was a homosexual who perpetrated a heterosexual myth upon his reading public. Exotic writings, including Loti’s romance novels, were born as a revolt or as romantic and sexual escapism against the rigid state control and social anxiety at the turn of the twentieth century in Europe. The imaginary world of Loti’s male fantasy, intermingled with exoticism, has romanticized and mystified the Western view of East Asian countries as well as Asian women. It is historical irony and misfortune that one of the most enduring cultural images of Asian women in Western culture originated out of the wedlock of escapist sentiment of fin-de-siècle and exoticism.
Abstract
This article is a study of the origin and the historical development of the Madame Butterfly narrative as the dominant representation of Asian women in Western culture, which was part of the cultural apparatus of nineteenth-century exoticism and fin-de-siècle. The popular Western opera’s favorite theme about the East, the interracial romance, found its origin in the French operas Lakmé and Madame Chrysanthème. Pierre Loti’s romance novel, Madame Chrysanthème (1887), is the progenitor of the Butterfly narrative as it is a tragic romance between a white man and an Asian woman. Nominally, the center of the travelogue is a firsthand look at different people and customs. However, the reality of the Eastern locale did not concern Loti, who associated the exotic with escape, and this phenomenon applied to his racial and sexual preconceptions as well. In this regard, the real protagonist in Loti’s novels is himself, a man who uses Asian women as a means of self-aggrandizement. Several biographers and Loti scholars have written that the writer was a homosexual who perpetrated a heterosexual myth upon his reading public. Exotic writings, including Loti’s romance novels, were born as a revolt or as romantic and sexual escapism against the rigid state control and social anxiety at the turn of the twentieth century in Europe. The imaginary world of Loti’s male fantasy, intermingled with exoticism, has romanticized and mystified the Western view of East Asian countries as well as Asian women. It is historical irony and misfortune that one of the most enduring cultural images of Asian women in Western culture originated out of the wedlock of escapist sentiment of fin-de-siècle and exoticism.
참고문헌 (25)
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