Galatea

The husband is never given a name, a choice that mirrors (but reverses) Galatea’s namelessness in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. He is Galatea’s creator, which gives their relationship a parent-child dynamic in addition to their official husband-wife relationship, a fact he points out when he describes himself as Galatea’s father, mother, and lover. A professional sculptor, he created her after he became disgusted with the women around him; when he realized how perfect she was, he began praying to the goddess to bring her to life, a scenario he has Galatea roleplay repeatedly in her hospital room. He likes “white, smooth surfaces,” finds Galatea’s stretch marks “ugly,” and describes teenage girls as particularly beautiful (19).

The husband is cruel, abusive, and controlling of both Galatea and Paphos. He became “angry” when Galatea’s body changed during her pregnancy, but it is implied that he continued to rape her on a regular basis. Galatea says that her husband did not expect his sculpture to be able to speak, which suggests that he would have preferred a silent, pliant wife. He values virginity and finds female sexuality as abhorrent as he finds female independence. When he became suspicious that Paphos’s tutors were attracted to Galatea, he fired them without question, implying his lack of investment in Paphos’s education and happiness, and a deep fear of women gaining knowledge. Through him, the text explores The Fetishization of Purity and Perfection.

Galatea gives few indications of what her husband looks like, but she describes his hair as “thinning” and “long and greasy from brooding” (43). At the end, she adds that he has never liked exercise, making it easy for her to stay ahead of him as they run toward the sea. When he tries to free himself from her grasp, his hits are “watery and weak,” and it is ultimately very easy for her to pull him to the ocean floor (49).

Paphos, the daughter of Galatea and the sculptor, is 10 when the story takes place. Galatea became pregnant with Paphos the first time she and the sculptor had sex. She describes her pregnancy as “real enough.” Despite the fact that she had once been solid stone, she experienced all the pregnancy symptoms that would be expected in a typical woman.

It is unclear whether Paphos is fully human, like her father. The text draws a number of comparisons between her and Galatea, implying that Paphos might have inherited some traces of divinity from her mother. Galatea describes Paphos as “beautiful and stone-pale” and says that even in the hottest weather, the two of them are “always perfectly cool” (25). An old woman touches Paphos’s feet and asks for Galatea’s blessing, solidifying both women’s connection to the divine.

Paphos is depicted as strong-willed, adventurous, and intelligent. She and Galatea play imaginative games, including one in which Paphos pretends to be a shepherd and Galatea a sheep or a goat. After Galatea convinces her husband to get their daughter a tutor, Paphos teaches Galatea how to read and write by using sand. She grows deeply unhappy when her father takes away her tutor and starts keeping her at home; she becomes “impatient” and does not back down from conflicts with the sculptor. Galatea emphasizes this when she says Paphos “was taller than the other girls, and long-limbed. She wasn’t afraid of [her father]” (30). In this way, Paphos is very different from Galatea, who always tries to smooth over tensions between any of them. However, Paphos is intuitive enough to understand that her father is violent, and knows not to say anything to him when Galatea tells her they are going to run away.