Galatea

Madeline Miller’s “Galatea: A Short Story,” was originally published as an e-book in 2013, but its popularity inspired Ecco Press to release a standalone hardcover version in 2022. Miller (1978-) is an American novelist known for her retellings of classical Greek and Roman myths. The story reimagines the Greek myth of the sculptor Pygmalion through the eyes of his subject Galatea. In the original myth, Pygmalion creates a statue, Galatea. Though he is contemptuous of women for what he sees as their sexual promiscuity, he falls in love with his female creation and begins dressing it and bringing it gifts. The goddess of love, Aphrodite, gives the statue life.

Miller’s retelling uses poetic language and dreamlike imagery. It touches on themes fundamental to the original story, including bodily autonomy, ideas of purity and perfection, and dynamics of gendered power in both the domestic sphere and the public sphere.

This guide refers to the hardcover version published in 2022 by Ecco.

Content Warning: This guide refers to scenes involving rape and domestic abuse that feature in “Galatea.”

An unnamed woman—whom we can infer is Galatea—is receiving medical treatment for an undisclosed illness. She describes the doctor and nurse who attend to her, noting that the two of them are having an affair. She also mentions her husband, who has informed the medical staff that Galatea sometimes says strange, fanciful things. As a result, the doctor does not trust Galatea and frequently chides her for not lying still. Galatea herself insists that she is abnormally cold and pale because she was once made of stone.

Galatea reveals that she has been in the hospital, which is on a cliff over the sea, for a year. The doctor and nurse regularly give her a tea that causes her tongue to burn and makes her urinate involuntarily. Galatea has learned that if she lies completely still in a carefully arranged position, they will not give her the tea, and her husband, when he visits, will be happy.

Galatea then remembers when her husband sculpted her, a process she refers to as her “birth.” He had become disillusioned with the free sexual practices of the local women. Instead of being with a human woman, he sculpted Galatea out of marble, draped her in beautiful silks and jewels, and prayed to the goddess every night until his sculpture came to life. Since then, Galatea’s “job” has been to pretend on a daily basis that she is a dormant, unmoving statue once again, and that her husband brings her to life with loving words and sex, which is in fact rape, as Galatea has not consented. The text implies that Galatea’s husband confined her to the hospital after she attempted to escape from him.

In the past, Galatea learned that her husband had begun working on a new sculpture, this one of a 10-year-old girl. The two of them, in fact, have a 10-year-old daughter named Paphos. Galatea’s husband fired a number of Paphos’s tutors, convinced they were giving Galatea inappropriate attention, and is also jealous of Galatea and Paphos’s close relationship. He became increasingly violent toward Galatea, brutalizing her both physically and emotionally. Galatea recalls her escape attempt in more detail, revealing that she had tried to take Paphos with her, but they were caught passing through a neighboring town.

In the present day, Galatea pretends to be pregnant and tricks the sympathetic nurse into letting her have a miscarriage outside. When the nurse goes back into the hospital to fetch the doctor, Galatea runs back to her home. She does not wake Paphos but spells out her daughter’s name in sand to let her know she had been there. She removes the silks and flower from the new statue, preventing it from becoming human. She then wakes her husband and runs toward the sea, knowing he will chase her. Once they are in the water, Galatea locks her arms around him and lets the weight of her stone body pull them both to the ocean floor.