AustLit

'The Pygmalion story in Metamorphosis by Roman poet Ovid originates from the ancient Greek mythology, reflecting poet's affirmation and eulogy of the value and significance of this life while Bernard Shaw's namesake comedy Pygmalion emphasizes the environmental and educational influence on the formation of perfect personality, evident of bourgeois values of freedom, equality and independence. Roman poet Ovid's Pygmalion story and Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, both of which end in comedy, maintain an optimistic outlook towards the making of a perfect human being. But Patrick White's The Vivisector, which is in fact a Pygmalion story rewritten as a modern tragedy, presents the life of a superman artist, Hurtle Duffield, whose vivisection of his models leads him not only to a success in art but also to the deconstruction and destruction of real human life. The story is indicative of a tragic failure on Hurtle's effort to reshape and reorder the chaotic modern world as well as an existential dilemma of modern man who vainly seeks to establish a spiritual homeland. (1-2)