User:DanCherek/Galatea (short story)

"Galatea" is a short story by the American writer Madeline Miller.

Background and publication history


Madeline Miller, whose debut novel The Song of Achilles was published in 2011, conceived of "Galatea" while working on her second novel, Circe. The story is based on the myth of Pygmalion, a sculptor who is described in Ovid's narrative poem Metamorphoses. In Ovid's version, Pygmalion creates the statue after being disgusted by sex workers and swearing off all female companionship, and the goddess Venus later brings the statue, who remains unnamed, to life. Unlike The Song of Achilles and Circe, which combined myths from numerous sources, "Galatea" was written as a "response, almost solely, to Ovid's version of the Pygmalion myth". Miller was "disturbed by the deeply misogynist implications of the story", including Ovid's depiction of the woman's subservience to Pygmalion, and endeavored to write a story about her search for freedom.

The short story was published as an ebook by Bloomsbury Publishing on July 4, 2013, and by Ecco (an imprint of HarperCollins) on August 13, 2013. It was first published in print as part of the anthology xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths. The anthology, edited by Kate Bernheimer and published by Penguin Books on September 24, 2013, contains retellings of myths and fairy tales by contemporary writers.

"Galatea" was released as a standalone hardcover edition in the United Kingdom by Bloomsbury on March 3, 2022, and in the United States by Ecco on November 8, 2022. In a review for The Washington Post, the journalist Rachelle Hampton intepreted the 2022 re-release as a response to Miller's resurgent popularity on BookTok, a subcommunity on the app TikTok focused on books and literature. Hampton observed that the aesthetics of the hardcover edition of "Galatea" ("with its attractive midnight-blue cover and gold-embossed lettering") would likely appeal to BookTok readers, and predicted that there would be increased demand for "Galatea" while fans of Miller waited for the unscheduled release of her next novel, an adaptation of the myths of the goddess Persephone.

Plot


The beautiful Galatea is created as a marble statue by a talented sculptor. The sculptor falls in love with his creation and vehemently prays to a goddess every night for the statue to come to life. His wish comes true and he marries her; she soon gives birth to their daughter, Paphos. Over the years, the sculptor is physically abusive to Galatea and, during sex, frequently demands that they reenact her transformation from statue to woman. He jealously dismisses Paphos's tutor and forbids Paphos from taking walks with her mother. Galatea and Paphos try to escape together on one occasion but are quickly recaptured. The sculptor punishes Galatea by imprisoning her by the sea and separating her from Paphos. She is constantly sedated by a doctor, treated with disdain by her nurses, and otherwise visited only by her husband.

After a year in captivity, Galatea formulates a plan to escape when her husband tells her that he is carving a new statue of a girl, only ten years old. She tells him that she is pregnant again. Displeased, he instructs the doctor to prescribe a tea that will induce an abortion. The nurse permits her to drink it outside and after doing so, Galatea pretends to have excruciating cramps. When the nurse leaves to fetch the doctor, she runs to the sculptor's house. She decides not to wake her sleeping daughter and instead uses some sand to spell Paphos's name – the only letters she knows – on the floor. She encounters the statue of the girl and then awakens her husband and leads him on a chase through the town and towards the sea. As Galatea swims away from shore, he catches up to her and grabs her, but instead of fighting back, she seizes him and refuses to let go. As they both sink to the bottom of the sea, she turns back to marble and thinks of Paphos.