"Pygmalion" by John Updike

You can read the beginning of the story here.

You can order the collection here.

Even on the first read of this story, something inside me immediately was drawn to it, in the way that favorite stories give me a certain specific sense of “aha!” or recognition. Updike builds the story so expertly, brick by brick, not a word wasted. In the first paragraph, he sets out the blueprint for the rest of the story: he characterizes the first wife by describing her skill of impersonations; he characterizes the second wife by ingeniously having the first wife impersonate the second wife; there is tension and plot in the knowledge that Gwen will become his second wife; and there is a contrast between the two women with the statement about Gwen’s “liveliness in bed” and the detail about Marguerite falling asleep night after night while he rubs her back. In addition, we get a sense of the character of the narrator, even in just the first paragraph – here is a man who likes women to perform for him, who ranks sexual performance as a priority, who likes making fun of people behind their backs, who has no loyalty (neither to his first wife Marguerite, as he cheated on her with Gwen; nor to Gwen, as he enjoyed and laughed heartily at Marguerite’s biting impression of her.)

In addition, the main character’s name (which is also the title of the story) is loaded with meaning and foreshadowing: Pygmalion is a familiar play by George Bernard Shaw about a man who tries to change a woman into the feminine ideal he desires. This is alluded to in the second page, when Gwen impersonates Marguerite’s new husband and the narrator “laughed and laughed, entranced to see his bride arrive at what he conceived to be proper womanliness – a plastic, alert sensitivity to the human environment, a susceptible responsiveness tugged this way and that by the currents of Nature herself.” We as readers suspect there is more to this than him simply enjoying being entertained by impersonations; Updike confirms this in a single statement, subtly buried in the middle of a paragraph: “He could not know the world, was his fear, unless a woman translated it for him.” With this sentence, the story expands not just into a story about this single couple, but about the whole genders they represent.

Updike creates one of those perfect endings that is surprising at first, but then at the same time feels inevitable; the reader realizes the story was building up to it the whole time. By changing one aspect of Gwen, the narrator has changed other aspects of her as well. Not only does she fall asleep, night after night, just like the first wife, but “something in her that was all her own – fell out of reach.” With this single detail, Updike calls back to the first wife, making the reader wonder if she had been changed and broken by the narrator before the story began; this detail also reaches forward to the future beyond the story, making the reader wonder if the narrator will leave Gwen now, just as he left Marguerite.