In this excerpt, David Henry Hwang plays off of stereotypes about men and women in relation to race to set up the prevailing attitude through which the narrator, Gallimard, perceives the world and comment on the position of white men. In this scene, Gallimard describes the play Madame Butterfly, where Pinkerton, a white naval officer from the United States, has purchased a teenage girl, Butterfly, for approximately 66 cents. She is previously described as a feminine ideal, and is now presented as a graceful, coy woman. She “glides” and laughs “softly behind her fan”, word choices that evoke modesty and reinforce Gallimard’s preconceptions about the delicacy and modesty of Asian women. Butterfly, a shyly seductive young woman, is portrayed