Review: Galatea by Madeline Miller

 

Galatea: A Short Story

by Madeline Miller

Originally published July 2013

This edition published March 2022

☙ ☙ ☙

First, click here for a quick primer on the Pygmalion & Galatea myth.

Pygmalion was a sculptor. He created in statue form the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen and fell in love with her. Then Aphrodite brought her to life. 

It is a tale that has been told and retold over the centuries by artists such as Ovid, Rodin, George Bernard Shaw, and many others. If you've seen My Fair Lady, you've seen an interpretation of it.

Here, Miller's Galatea, as she states in the afterword, is a response to Ovid's version in his Metamorphosis, which has rather misogynist undertones. In Miller's version, we discover that Galatea (living in a slightly more modern, if unspecified, time period) has spent the last year hospitalized, being told to rest, continuously gaslighted and tranquilized by medical staff. Her husband (Pygmalion) comes to visit but isn't very kind to her. She no longer possesses the physical perfection he originally created her with and harbors resentment towards her. 

The story is extremely short but Miller packs it with meaning and relevance. It reminded me of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story The Yellow Wallpaper (read it if you haven't) as well as Kate Chopin's The Awakening (read it if you haven't). It's brief but impactful. The ending is perfection. I think this deserves a place in the pantheon of feminist literature right alongside those two works I previously mentioned.

5 stars out of 5