Book Review: Galatea by Madeline Miller

Galatea by Madeline Miller

Book title: Galatea
Author: Madeline Miller
Genre: Ancient retelling, fantasy, short story
Published: First published in 2013; this edition from 2022
49 pages
My rating: 5/5

It was almost sweet the way they worried about me.
“You’re so pale,” the nurse said. “You must keep quiet until your color returns.”
“I’m always this colour,” I said. “Because I used to be made of stone.”

Galatea is Madeline Miller’s short story that retells the myth of the sculptor Pygmalion and his statue-come-to-life Galatea. The short story is based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which narrates several ancient myths where people become animals or plants, or as in the case of this myth, an inanimate object comes to life. In Ovid’s version, sculptor Pygmalion is horrified by “shameless” and “lascivious” prostitutes and instead carves himself a woman from ivory, making her more perfect than any woman can be. He falls in love with his creation and after many prayers, the goddess Venus brings the statue to life. Ovid's version seems to indicate that the couple lives happily ever after.

The myth has been adapted many times from My Fair Lady to Pretty Woman, usually casting the story as a romance. Miller, on the contrary, explores the misogynistic implications of Ovid's narrative. The only good woman is sexually “pure” and physically flawless (and white as ivory). Ovid doesn’t even mention her name, and Miller takes the name Galatea from other versions of the myth.

Miller’s story gives the voice to Galatea herself, locked in a sickroom and kept under the guard of a nurse and a doctor who insist that she must lie still. If she disobeys their commands, they force her to take medicine that makes her unconscious – unless, obviously, it is the day her husband decides to visit her. In Miller’s version, the sculptor remains nameless, and the only named characters are women.

This short story is a fast read and only took me about an hour to finish, but it packs an emotional punch. The writing style is not as flowery and ornate as in Miller’s longer works (see my review of Circe, which I read earlier this month). Galatea was a lovely short story about a resourceful and determinate woman, and I highly recommend it to fans of historical fantasy.