“Galatea” is, at its heart, a counternarrative: It undermines, contradicts, and builds upon its source material, the story of Pygmalion from Metamorphoses (8 CE), a Latin poem by Roman poet Ovid. The most fundamental transformation is the shift in perspective, with the central figure no longer being Pygmalion but Galatea (who is nameless in the original story). While Miller retains the essential narrative details from Ovid’s tale, she also updates the story, setting it in a modern (albeit ambiguous) time period, with characters who possess noticeably modern patterns of speech and behavior. While the original dynamic between Pygmalion and Galatea still serves as a framework and reference point for the text, the sexual politics with which the story is concerned are now infused with a liberatory strain of 21st-century feminism. Ultimately, the story’s structure, tone, and style work together to demonstrate how myth is not a stable form of expression but can be actively transformed into a subversion of its own traditions and of readerly expectations about what a myth should look like.

The majority of the narrative takes place in the hospital, which is one of the story’s most significant modern updates.