Reading Notes: Week 2 Anthology

Who needs Tinder with decor like this? Image

My favorite story of the anthology is the story of Pygmalion the sculptor, only because I find the story so ridiculous and pointless. The story is relatively short and succinct, but the fate of the sculptor of Paphos at the end of the story baffles me. Pygmalion's ego combined with his weird, lusty obsession with an inanimate object is for some reason just rewarded by the gods with no downsides, which is exceedingly rare in Greek/Roman mythology.

The Greek/Roman gods are not nice, and usually, if they aren't already battling with one another, they're terribly bored if they aren't meddling in mortal affairs. Usually Greek/Roman stories use some form of punishment/conflict with the gods as a way of conveying a lesson through the story (Arachne and Daedalus' hubris, Narcissus' obsession, and Midas' greed are all perfect examples of this).

However, apparently this doesn't really apply to Pygmalion, as there's no real lesson to be learned from this story, unless maybe that the author is trying to say that the best women are the ones you treat like objects. Pygmalion is a self-proclaimed misogynist (but to be fair, everyone was back then), but instead of changing anything about his views, he just sculpts himself his ideal woman out of ivory. He then falls madly in love with his ivory doll, giving it gifts and physically caressing it constantly.

And, according to Venus, this is perfectly normal behavior that should apparently be rewarded. On the day of the goddess' festival, Pygmalion offers a prayer to Venus to turn his ivory doll human, and Venus just says "Ok, sure!" and so Pygmalion and his new fleshy lover get married and live happily ever after.

Maybe this is just my more modern sensibilities talking, but this story just lacks substance to me. It's more creepy than romantic, and there's really not a conflict/lesson as Pygmalion's "problems" are pretty much just solved immediately for no real reason. I am clearly not this story's intended audience, though I'm kind of failing to see who exactly the audience is, except for maybe all the lonely sculptors out there. If Pygmalion existed today, something tells me he'd be wearing a fedora and saying "M'lady" a lot.

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