Ah, my beauty is asleep...
Galatea
by Madeline Miller
Genre: Fantasy, Short Story
About: A sculptor makes the perfect woman out of stone, then begs the goddess Venus to make stone flesh and gift him a wife. But though Galatea is born from his hands, her mind and will is her own. She will not be perfect. She will not submit. She will not be his.
The Good
Madeline Miller picked a really interesting myth to retell. In the myth, the sculptor falls in love with his art and the happy ending comes from them having a family together. This retelling shows a different reality - and a very relatable one for many women. The controlling and abusive behaviour of her husband show the misogynistic side of the myth. Miller's Afterword describes the husband as an incel and I think this modern term is perfectly illustrated within the story. Pygmalion's views on women, his expectations of Galatea, and the exacting nature of her confinement reveals the danger of romanticising this myth - of thinking of women as art, of needing purity yet at the same time reducing women to objects of desire and no more.
The impact of motherhood is also a significant point. Galatea is accused of loving her child more than her husband, her body is made less perfect from pregnancy and labour, and the unruly child disappoints Pygmalion enough that he creates a new child of stone. Motherhood is also Galatea's way to escape - she knows she doesn't have control over her own body and manipulates the events that are being used to oppress her in order to escape. This creates an ending that is really brilliant, one that's poignant in so many ways and will certainly stick with me.
The Bad
Galatea was an interesting character and I liked how she saw the world, but I didn't find the writing as beautiful as Miller's full length novels. There was definitely beauty in the story and Galatea as a character, but the prose was very stark. It made perfect sense for the story, it just wasn't something I loved while reading.
The Somewhat Iffy
I would have liked to have had some descriptions of the world. Things like clothing or objects in the room. I just wasn't too sure what time setting we were in. It didn't seem to be modern day exactly, but it also didn't feel like ancient times. I think the hospital setting was a bit jarring to me as, without clear descriptions of the place, when I read the words doctor or nurse, I jump immediately to a modern hospital.
Overall
A really clever retelling. It's a very short story but the substance behind it holds a lot of weight and the fantasy element so perfectly represents the problem behind the myth.
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