Transforming Gender and Emotions: The Butterfly Lovers Story in China and Korea by Sookja Cho

Author:Sookja Cho
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 2018-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

The butterfly in this episode is the manifestation of a dead man who has transformed for love of his wife and baby boy. In his changed form, he can linger with them a little longer and bid farewell to them through attentive flitting. This episode suggests that transformation can occur around people and in places to which the dead are physically and emotionally attached. The appearance of butterflies has a soothing effect on the living, especially when they miss their loved ones. In this sense, the story also illuminates the concern of the dead for the living. Far more than the first two episodes, this third one demonstrates how the butterfly transformation assumes meaning for ordinary people in their everyday lives, by temporarily bridging the emotional and physical abyss between the living and the dead shortly after a person’s death.

The butterfly episodes in Lai Jizhi’s essay all show humans returning to the world as butterflies either to bring messages, or to continue or complete their life’s work, particularly if they had an unhappy death. These episodes resonate with Liang-Zhu, in that each one illustrates how human souls can become butterflies if they have strong emotional and ethical ties to the people and places they love. Stories of the appearance of butterflies at funerals have been told and retold in modern China and Korea, though I have not found a Korean equivalent of Lai Jizhi’s essay.33 In Korea, there has long Page 153 →been a widespread notion that white butterflies are the souls of the dead who visit the living—especially those they have loved most—to say a final good-bye.34 It is not clear why white butterflies are associated with funerals while butterflies of other colors usually have cheerful and auspicious meanings in Korea.35 One clue might be found in the fact that Koreans themselves wear white at funeral ceremonies and shamanic death rituals. This link between the white butterfly and death and funerals in Korea seems to be a cultural variation within the prevalent trope of the souls of the dead returning as butterflies.

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