Book review: Galatea by Madeline Miller

According to Ovid’s version of the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, Pygmalion is a Cypriot sculptor who, horrified at the sexual licentiousness of his female compatriots, becomes celibate and carves an ideal woman out of ivory. He promptly falls in love with his creation and begs Aphrodite for a woman as perfect as his sculpture. The goddess brings Pygmalion’s artwork to life, upon which the two marry and have a daughter, Paphos.

In the Ovid, we’re meant to assume this is a happy ending. Madeline Miller’s powerful reimagining sees it as anything but. Instead of the noble, devout artist whose moral and aesthetic idealism is rewarded by the gods, Miller sees Pygmalion as the original incel. Unable to stand the sexual freedom of real women, he carves a ‘virgin’ out of marble. Once the goddess grants his wish to bring the statue to life, Pygmalion keeps her indoors as much as possible, feels threatened by any man who looks at her, and when he thinks she has stopped blushing as much as she ought to, physically abuses her for becoming ‘shameless’. One of the two most harrowing lines in the book comes after the retelling of this act of violence, as Pygmalion looks at the bruises he has inflicted and remarks, “You make the rarest canvas, love.” The other, for the record, is delivered by Pygmalion when he notices Galatea’s stretch marks: “They are ugly… If they were stone, I would chisel them off”.

In the present, Miller’s Galatea tells her story from a secure hospital where she has been sent for trying to run away from Pygmalion. The medical staff keep her drugged with a special tea, and every day her husband comes in to enact his favourite sexual fantasy: Galatea pretends to relive the moment she was brought to life before Pygmalion has sex with her. After all, what he really wanted was a statue ‘only warm so he might fuck [it]’.

The crisis comes when Pygmalion lets slip that he is carving a new girl – a ten year old. Not just an incel, then, but a paedophile. Paphos, Galatea and Pygmalion’s daughter, is also ten years old. Miller’s brilliant, strong, no-nonsense protagonist will not let another girl suffer as she has. Her version of the myth does have a happy ending. Only it isn’t happy for Pygmalion. And it is both joyously empowering and heart-rendingly tragic for the reader. At under 40 pages, Miller’s book is a miracle of brevity, packing a punch that is testament to its writer’s gift for story telling. And at that length, nobody has any excuse not to read it.