Galatea

The hospital where Galatea is confined is located on a cliff overlooking an unidentified sea. This body of water plays a crucial role in the story’s climax, and also has significant symbolic resonance. Throughout classical mythology, including in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, bodies of water represent change, flux, and transformation.

At the end of “Galatea,” Galatea makes intentional use of the sea to not only kill her husband but to transform herself back into solid stone, and thus liberate herself from her imprisonment. She describes this change in vague terms, saying only that “[it] crept up my fingers and my arms,” and “it was in my legs too, and my belly and my chest” (49). While she does not define “it,” the text suggests “it” is a gift from a deity, given after Galatea prays. Thus, the sea is simultaneously benevolent and violent, generous and cruel: It grants freedom to Galatea but only by taking her husband’s life. In this sense, it symbolizes the interconnected nature of creation and destruction, eroticism and violence, apparent throughout the story.

Reproduction is an important motif throughout “Galatea.” It serves dual purposes: to clarify what the text is saying about acts of artistic creation, and to draw attention to maternity and motherhood.