The Butterfly Lion

Bertie’s mother is the first of two women in the novel who die of heartbreak. Although initially it appears that her physical frailty is the result of malaria, Bertie interprets his mother’s deterioration as the physiological response to loss. While Bertie’s mother rallies briefly when she heroically rescues her son and the white lion cub from a pack of hyenas, ultimately, we understand her Grief as a Terminal Ailment. Some reasons for her grief are only hinted at: Bertie overhears her wistfully reminding his father that they will not have any other children, possibly indicating infertility. The white lion cub acts as a surrogate new child, and defending the cub revives her: “There was a spring to her step, and her laughter pealed around the house” (39). Bertie’s mother finds peace and happiness in coexisting with the lion. She washes the lion and cleans up his messes, and “[n]one of it seemed to upset her” (39)—imagery that reinforces her maternal relationship to the animal. However, the sunny reprieve is dramatically cut short: “It was the best year of Bertie’s young life. But when it ended, it ended more painfully than he could ever have imagined” (42). When Bertie is sent to England and the lion cub to France, Bertie’s mother is bereft again and dies “of a broken heart” (65). Without her child and quasi-child, Bertie’s mother no longer has a purpose, so her grief returns without abatement.

The novel connects the two mothers that readers have seen, as Bertie’s mother briefly finds within herself the strength and ferocity of the lioness. She is uncharacteristically heroic in her protection of the lion cub, first from the hyenas, which she chases off with gunfire, and then from her gruff husband, to whom she stands up in a way Bertie has never seen. However, this link between the two maternal figures also foreshadows Bertie’s mother’s doom: Just as Bertie’s father kills the lioness, so too do his decisions cause his wife to waste away and die. Through the unnecessary cruelty of Bertie’s father, whose primary goal is to forcefully impose his power onto the land and surrounding animals, the novel condemns the British colonial project in South Africa. Through Britain won the Boer Wars, public opinion turned against the inhumane way British colonists treated the South Africans and Boers in the process.

The story takes on new complexity in these chapters as the elderly Millie introduces a childhood version of herself into the embedded narrative which has until now focused solely on Bertie Andrews’s childhood in, and exile from, South Africa: “Up till now it’s been just Bertie’s story. He told it to me so often that I almost feel I was there when it happened. But from now on it’s my story too” (58). Likewise, the setting changes from a romanticized South African Transvaal filled with giraffes, elephants, lions, and hyenas, to a British boarding school and neighboring manicured land.

Bertie’s childhood in the veldt seems to stark contrast with Millie’s life on a private estate set in rolling gardens. Yet Millie’s emotional world is similar to Bertie’s: “[T]he two of us, Bertie and I, got on so well from the first moment we met. We had so much in common from the very start” (58). Both endure extreme isolation inflicted on them by overprotective and distant fathers. Both have lost their mothers, as Millie’s mother died in childbirth, while Bertie’s died after he was sent to school. Both have been kept behind high walls, Millie in her massive estate and Bertie at his Wiltshire boarding school, and in his South African compound before that. They have no other friends and are desperate for companionship; their instant connection and decision to meet every week highlight The Enduring and Transformative Power of Friendship. Once Millie and Bertie begin meeting every Sunday, they continue regardless of the weather or the threat of a beating for Bertie and a scolding for Millie if they are discovered. In this, their determination and perseverance to remain in each other’s lives results in a lifelong relationship and marks the end of their loneliness.