"Pygmalion's Bride" retells the Greek myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. In this old tale, the sculptor Pygmalion carves a statue of a beautiful woman he names Galatea—then falls desperately in love with his creation. Aphrodite (goddess of love) takes pity on him and transforms Galatea into a flesh-and-blood woman so the couple can marry.
In this dramatic monologue (a poem told from the perspective of a particular character, like a speech from a play), Galatea tells her side of the story—and, as is often the case in poems from Carol Ann Duffy's The World's Wife, it's not such a nice story, seen from her point of view.
In the poem's opening tercet, Galatea describes herself as "Cold [...] like snow" or "ivory." These similes emphasize Galatea's coolness and hardness. Snow and ivory are also both white, a color typically associated with purity. Thus, Galatea establishes how, as a statue, she lacks human warmth, softness, and sexuality.
Galatea believes that her stony, virginal appearance will dissuade Pygmalion from making a pass at her—"I thought He will not touch me"—but she's mistaken. It's important to note that because Galatea is essentially an inanimate object, she doesn't invite, consent, or even respond to Pygmalion's touch; rather, he acts entirely according to his own whims. And act he does: though she thinks he won't touch her, she concludes, with grim simplicity: "But he did."
Galatea will go on to tell her story over the course of 51 lines of free verse (that is, poetry without a consistent meter or rhyme scheme). This unpredictability makes the poem feel conversational, which feels appropriate for such a personal account. The poem is also divided into seven stanzas of varying lengths. Generally speaking, these stanzas grow longer as the poem goes on. This allows its pace and tension to gradually increase—until a brief final couplet that will work rather like a punchline.