1 - Loti and Long – with an Eyewitness Account

Summary

Begins by contrasting representations of a “Japanese marriage” in Pierre Loti’s Madame Chrysanthème and John Luther Long’s “Madame Butterfly.” Loti’s fictitious autobiography imbeds a whimsical mènage within an evocative and exotic – but pervasively racist – representation of Japan and the Japanese. Long’s third-person narrative focuses on the private tragedy of an American naval officer’s capricious “westernization” of a naïve “temporary wife” and her ensuing cultural alienation. Although Long engages in an intertextual critique with Loti, his story is primarily based on a real-life incident in Nagasaki witnessed by his missionary sister, Jennie Long Correll. Reminiscences by her in 1931 make it possible to reconstruct elements of the original event and even suggest a probable model for the American protagonist.