A review by friends2lovers
Galatea by Madeline Miller

dark sad fast-paced

1.5

This is a retelling of the myth of Pygmalion. This myth is included in Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, which I am gradually making my way through in a piecemeal fashion. I read Miller’s story before Hamilton’s, and wrongly assumed—because Hamilton places it in a section called ‘Eight Brief Tales of Lovers’—that it was a romance/love story. Miller’s Galatea is basically about misogyny and abuse. There is no love, except that between Galatea and her daughter. I would not consider this a particularly pleasurable reading experience, but it was written well.

After finishing Miller’s short story, I read Hamilton’s version in Mythology and couldn’t help making some comparisons. In both stories, Pygmalion is a misogynist. Hamilton’s first sentences are (the italicized part is Hamilton quoting Ovid): 

A gifted young sculptor of Cyprus, named Pygmalion, was a woman-hater. Detesting the faults beyond measure which nature has given to women, he resolved never to marry. 

Hamilton’s story gives Pygmalion sort of a redemption arc, and it ends on an ambiguous, yet somewhat happy note: 

With unutterable gratitude and joy he put his arms around his love and saw her smile into his eyes. Venus herself graced their marriage with her presence, but what happened after that we do not know…

It seems that Miller set out to tell the story of “what happened after” and in her version their marriage is not a happy one. The ending is bittersweet.

Endnotes: Literary fiction, mythology, 1st-person single POV, short story (6k words), ebook borrowed from Hoopla
Further Reading: The Pygmalion myth comes from The Metamorphoses of Ovid
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