Galatea

The context of the story is so sad. A man, a sculptor, making a ‘perfect woman’ only for his own desires. What shocked me more is that she is not the first, he has done this before where he sculptures his ideal woman and of course she has to be perfect, beautiful and compliant and Galatea is not compliant at all. The true joy to this story is her love for her daughter Paphos and throughout this short story she only has joyous and kind things to say about her daughter and tells her husband how much he misses her and all he does is acts like jealous little baby wishing to be missed by her instead. He aggravated and disgusted me throughout the book; there is no redeeming quality about which I really like. A lot of the time in greek mythology the disgusting men were often praised for their other attributes or charms which overshadowed their wrongdoings.
I rlly like how Madeline took Pygmalion’s greek mythology story and turned it into smth but a fetishised happy ending where his sculpture comes to life (like in Galatea) and they marry, having a child. Instead Galatea (who doesn’t even have a name in Pygmalion’s story) is trying to get away from her disgusting husband and trying to protect her daughter and the girl after her by drowning him (very satisfying) and herself. There is no romanisation of the situation and it’s told for you to be disgusted and repulsed. Whereas in Pygmalion’s story, the ‘happy ending’ isn’t a happy ending at all bc he made a woman who has no self beyond pleasing a man his wife fetishised for her sexual purity and the whole sculpturing her to his perfection which is just his male fantasy dismissing female reality.
I wish for Madeline to dive in into Galatea with more depth. Having dipped my two into her story, I would love to see her wit and charm be unfolded more and see the relationship with her daughter, a sad one but joyous, yet interesting dynamic to read bc of the relationship between her, her daughter and her husband. I wouldn’t even mind a version of Paphos’ perspective on the story. I think with great writing which Madeline has, this story could be so much more.