The Story of Pygmalion

The story of Pygmalion is about a sculptor who falls in love with an ivory statue of a woman he has made. Venus, the goddess of love, brings the statue to life, and Pygmalion marries it. Aylmer’s reference to Pygmalion reveals much about his own character. By comparing himself to the sculptor, Aylmer believes that he is clever enough to create the perfect woman. He also reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of his own project. Unlike Pygmalion, Aylmer isn’t creating a woman where none previously existed. He is tampering with a perfectly beautiful woman. The reference to Pygmalion reveals that Aylmer’s self-regard has blinded him to the true nature of his experiment.

A reference to sculpture reveals the narrator’s distaste for Aylmer’s image of himself as a magical creator of life. Before Aylmer refers to Pygmalion, the narrator condemns those jealous women who claim that the birthmark spoils Georgiana’s beauty, saying that making such a claim is as silly as pretending that a tiny blue mark in  in marble would turn a statue of Eve into a monstrosity. It is a small moment, but a revealing one. http://www.sparknotes.com/short-stories/the-birthmark/section3.rhtml