The Full Text of “Mrs Midas”
The Full Text of “Mrs Midas”
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“Mrs Midas” Introduction
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“Mrs Midas” is a poem written by the contemporary Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy, the former Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom. The poem alludes to the Greek myth of King Midas, who was granted a wish to have everything he touched turn to gold. The poem, however, tells this well-known story from the perspective of Midas’s wife, using humor and wit to explore the foolish nature of greed, the historical erasure of women’s experiences, and the consequences of selfishness within a relationship. “Mrs Midas” was included in Duffy’s 1999 collection The World’s Wife and reprinted in her New Selected Poems 1984-2004.
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“Mrs Midas” Summary
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The speaker begins by telling the reader that it all started near the end of September. The speaker had poured herself a glass of wine and started to relax (as at the end of a long day), while the vegetables she'd been preparing for dinner were cooking. As the whole kitchen became full of the aromas of the cooking food, it was as though the room itself also seemed to relax. The steam coming from the cooking vegetables seemed like the kitchen's breath, and started to fog up the windows. In order to see out of them, the speaker opened one window, and used her fingers to wipe the steam off the other window as though she were wiping sweat off of a person’s forehead. It was then that the speaker saw her husband standing beneath a pear tree in the yard and breaking a small stick in half.
The speaker notes that the garden containing the pear tree extended far away from the house, and as such it was difficult for her to see well. It was the time of evening when the ground, already dark, seems to absorb or consume all the sky’s light. Yet even from this distance, the speaker says, she could see that the twig her husband was holding was made of gold. Then, she says, her husband picked a pear off of the tree—it was a particular French variety of pear that they grew, to be exact—and this pear in his hand, she says, looked like a light bulb that had been switched on. Confused, the speaker asks herself whether her husband was hanging small string lights onto the tree.
The speaker's husband then came back inside, and as he did so the doorknobs that he had touched shone. He closed the curtains, unsurprisingly prompting the speaker's mind to make new associations; the appearance of the curtains made her think of the Field of the Cloth of Gold (a historical reference to a meeting of the Kings of England and France where each brought a huge amount of gold fabric to impress the other) and Miss Macready, a character in a British television series who had prominent gold-colored hair. The speaker's husband next sat in a chair as though he was a king sitting on a polished gold throne. He had an expression on his face that was odd, untamed, and arrogant. When the speaker asked him what in God’s name was happening, he just laughed.
The speaker served them both dinner, beginning with corn on the cob. Almost at once, she says, her husband spat out the kernels of corn, which now looked like gold teeth that might fill the mouths of rich people. Her husband then picked up and turned over in his hand all the silverware (both his own and hers), before asking her where the wine was. The speaker's hand trembled as she poured him a glass of wine, which was aromatic, dry white wine from Italy. She watched as her husband raised the glass—which, in turning into gold, looked more like a goblet or the type of cup used for serving wine during Catholic communion—and then drank out of this golden cup.
At this point the speaker started screaming, prompting her husband to drop to the floor on his knees. Once they had both regained their composure, the speaker drank the rest of the wine by herself while she listened to her husband's explanation. She forced him sit across the room and not to touch anything. She also locked the cat in the basement to keep it safe from him and moved the phone away from him too. She didn't protest when he turned the toilet into gold, however. All the same, she couldn't believe what he told her: that he had made a wish.
Okay, the speaker allows, everyone wishes for things. But who, she asks, actually has their wishes come true? She answers her own question: her husband does. She then asks the reader if they know what gold is like. It can’t be eaten as food, she says; it has the mineral name “aurum,” which also means luster or shine; it is a soft kind of metal; it can’t be tarnished; you also can’t drink it when you're thirsty. The speaker then explains what happened when her husband tried to light a cigarette: she'd looked at him, totally absorbed in what was happening, as the blue-colored flame danced over the now golden cigarette, which resembled a kind of flower stem or the stem of a glass. She says she told her husband that at least now he could finally quit smoking once and for all.
Describing the progression of the evening, the speaker says that they had to sleep separately, and beyond this, that she leaned a chair against the door of her room to prevent him from coming in because she was so terrified of what would happen. Her husband took the guest room downstairs, which, through his touch, quickly transformed into something resembling the tomb of King Tutankhamun (an ancient Egyptian pharaoh whose tomb contained an enormous amount of gold objects). She goes on to insists to the reader that she and her husband had been crazy about each other back then, in the idyllically happy time leading up to this. They would undress each other quickly, as though they were tearing the wrapping paper off presents or fast food. Now, though, the speaker says, she was afraid of him holding her, since where his embrace might once have been sweet like honey, now it was only like honey in that it would turn her to gold. She feared, too, that if he kissed her it would turn her lips into a golden sculpture.
And the fact of the matter is, the speaker says, that no one can actually live with a heart made out of gold. When the speaker slept that night, she had a dream in which she gave birth to her husband’s child and that the child was made out of gold, with golden arms and legs and a tiny tongue like a perfect fastening of a door. The child’s pupils were held in the child's golden eyes as though they were flies trapped in the amber. In the dream, the speaker says, her breast milk burned her because it too was made out of gold. She woke up to sunlight pouring over everything.
Because of all of this, the speaker says, her husband simply had to move out of the house. She says that they had a mobile home or camper of sorts in a remote area in the woods, surrounded by its own cluster of trees. She drove her husband there, she says, at night so that no one could see, and made him sit in the backseat of the car. She then went back home, now seeing herself as a woman who married a greedy idiot who wanted gold. The speaker visited her husband off and on for a while, parking the car well away from where he was and walking the rest of the way.
Describing these visits, the speaker says, it was easy to tell when she was getting near to where he was. She would see fish turned to gold on the grass, and once saw a golden rabbit hanging from a pine tree, like a lovely lemon-colored error. After these first clues, she says, she would see her husband’s gold footprints, shining by the riverbed. Her husband had grown thin because he couldn’t eat and also delusional; he told her that he could hear the Greek god Pan playing his flute in the trees and told her to listen for it. This, the speaker says, finally made her feel that she could not go on interacting with him.
What bothers the speaker these days, she says, is not her husband’s stupidity or greediness, but the fact that he didn’t think of her at all when he made his wish. It was, she says, utterly selfish. She eventually sold off all the golden objects in the house and came to the place where she is now. Still, though, she remembers her husband sometimes, thinking of him at particular times of day when the light is a certain way, like in early morning or late in the afternoon. One time, she says, seeing a bowl of apples stopped her in her tracks because of the memories and feelings that it brought up. What she still misses most of all, the speaker says, are her husband's hands—the feel of his warm hands on her skin, his living touch.
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“Mrs Midas” Themes
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The Erasure of Women's Experiences
Duffy's poem revamps the famous myth of King Midas, with a major shift: the focus of the story is not the king himself, but rather his wife. The poem thus elevates a perspective that was left out of the original story, revealing how a greedy man's wish sent the life of the woman closest to him into turmoil. While the poem isn’t necessarily about women’s experiences at large, its very existence—and, indeed, The World’s Wife as a whole, the collection in which this poem was published—critiques the erasure of women’s experiences. The poem implies the steep cost of such erasure, as the speaker's life is also irrevocably changed when her husband makes a wish that fails to consider her altogether.
Most people who know the myth of King Midas know it as exactly that—a myth about a king and what happened to him. The poem's title thus immediately calls the reader’s attention to what was left out of the original story: the perspective of the king’s wife, who would of course have been very much affected by the fact that everything her husband touched turned to gold!
Within the poem, Mrs. Midas herself insists that her husband’s wish is based on an act of erasure. “What gets me now,” the speaker says, “is not the idiocy or greed / but lack of thought for me.” In other words, the speaker understands that in the moment of his wish, her husband wasn’t even thinking of her at all; he had effectively erased her from his thoughts. The implication is that, if Mr. Midas had thought of his wife and the effects on her, he might not have made the wish in the first place. The poem suggests, then, that this erasure of female experience—or, perhaps more broadly, any experience beyond that of powerful men like the king—is, at least in part, at the root of the harm that follows.
Finally, by telling the story from the wife’s point of view, the poem forces the reader to consider the pain she experiences as a result of her husband’s actions. The speaker reveals how harmful the whole ordeal has been for her—from her initial fear of being turned to gold herself, to her later sense of loss of her husband and how she still “miss[es] … his touch.” Perhaps most tragically, the speaker details how her husband’s foolishness cost her the chance to have a child and become a mother.
These details add depth to the poem’s critique of greed and selfishness. The poem isn’t just about the perils of such qualities, however, but also about the specific consequences of failing to consider women’s experiences, and the way that such experiences have historically been subsumed by powerful men’s desires.
By centering Mrs. Midas’s perspective and experience, the poem counters this erasure of women’s experiences and implies that understanding these experiences is necessary and vital. And since the myth of King Midas is so well-known, the poem implicitly suggests that those very stories foundational to Western culture often leave out the perspectives and experiences of women.
Taken more broadly, then, the poem asks readers to think about what other myths, stories, and versions of history leave out or erase women’s perspectives and women’s experiences. The poem invites readers to consider what new insights they could gain if everyone’s perspectives were accounted for and given equal importance.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-66
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Materialism and Greed
“Mrs Midas” explores the consequences of selfishness and greed. It’s clear that Mr. Midas (the poem’s version of King Midas) thought only of himself in making his wish, which was based on a desire for endless wealth. Ironically, this wish ends up isolating himself from what the poem implies actually matters most—love, affection, and meaningful relationships with others and with one’s surroundings. The poem thus presents the desire for material wealth above all else as deeply foolish and destructive, serving only to distance the person who is greedy from all the things that make life meaningful.
After he makes his wish, Mr. Midas turns whatever he touches into gold, which might seem fun at first but actually just turns a lot of objects into useless trinkets. For example, he accidentally turns kernels from freshly cooked corn on the cob into golden nuggets that he must spit out—gold is pretty, the poem implies, but totally useless when it comes to dinner. His wife metaphorically calls these kernels “the teeth of the rich,” implicitly criticizing the frivolousness and excess of the wealthy.
The king also turns all his cigarettes to gold—which his wife jokes is a healthy consequence (since he’ll no longer be able to smoke), but also robs the king of yet another pleasurable experience. Great riches can’t actually nourish people in any meaningful way, the poem is implying; Mrs. Midas insists that gold “feeds no one” and “slakes / no thirst.”
Eventually, the king even has to move out of the house he shares with his wife and relocate to a “glade” (a remote place in the woods) to prevent him from accidentally turning anyone into a golden statue. Physically, then, his desire for riches literally separates him from the world. His greed also erodes his emotional relationship with his wife, and the poem suggests that they had loved each other and were “passionate” about each other but can no longer be.
The poem also implies that Mr. Midas’s greed leads him to lose his mind and eventually his life. The speaker describes how, on her last visit to see Mr. Midas, he is “thin” (because he can’t eat) and “delirious.” This description suggests that in effect Midas has lost his sanity and his humanity as a result of his own greed.
What’s more, the poem suggests that such greed ends up hurting everyone in its orbit as well. The speaker describes being afraid of her husband’s “kiss that would turn [her] lips to a work of art.” While a work of art is something that is culturally valued (not to mention expensive), in this case the image is frightening, since the speaker realizes that she would literally be turned into an object—something the poem insists is less valuable than actual life and actual relationships.
Most disturbingly, the speaker realizes that were she to have a child with her husband, this child, too, would be made of gold. She imagines this child in a dream as having “perfect ore limbs” and “amber eyes / holding their pupils like flies”—a description that powerfully captures the poem’s juxtaposition between material wealth and the value of life. Indeed, the “perfection” of the child is part of what is terrifying, since it would be “perfect” as an object, and “precious” only in the sense of being materially valuable—a horrifying distortion of familial love.
Finally, the poem shows that material greed is antithetical to the beauty and vitality of the natural world. The poem highlights, throughout, what happens when Midas comes into contact with living things: the pear he touches near the beginning of the poem resembles a “lightbulb”; later, in an especially troubling image, a rabbit he has touched “hung from a larch,” or pine tree, like a “beautiful lemon mistake.” These images show that Midas's greed harms his entire environment, as it saps life and vitality from everything with which he comes into contact. Materialism, the poem makes clear, is incompatible with life itself.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 9-66
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Relationships and Loneliness
While the poem explores the very strange outcomes of King Midas’s wish, it also, in a sense, explores a conventional marital relationship—and what happens when one person in the relationship acts in a profoundly selfish way. The poem suggests that within a relationship, one person's selfishness and failure to truly see the other will eventually lead both people to experience isolation and loneliness.
At the opening of the poem, the speaker’s description of this evening in “late September” suggests that it is a typical day in the life of this couple. The speaker is making dinner for both of them, a thoughtful gesture. She also notes that they grew pear trees together, citing a particular French variety of pear. These details suggest that they live a conventional domestic life and have shared interests.
The speaker also suggests that their relationship has been, in many ways, a happy one. She comments on their physical relationship, saying, “we were passionate then,” and describes their early relationship as “those halcyon days,” meaning that they were idyllically peaceful.
The turning point in the characters’ relationship is when Midas makes his wish, which is based on greed. Notably, this moment is highlighted by the speaker looking at her husband, while her husband does not look at her at all—staring instead as the product of his selfish wish. There is a clear contrast here; the speaker obviously took her husband into account in preparing dinner for both of them, but her husband seems not to see her or even to think of her in this moment, looking only at the gold in his hand. This physical dynamic emphasizes that while the speaker takes her husband's needs into account, he doesn't offer the same courtesy to his wife.
It is striking, too, that the first thing the speaker’s husband turns to gold is a twig from a tree that they grew together. Trees are traditionally symbols of life, and in this case the pear tree is a symbol of the couple’s life together, since it was something that they grew and cultivated with each other. The husband begins to break this tree apart as he thinks only of himself.
The poem goes on to show the impact of Midas’s selfishness on the couple’s relationship. Soon after Midas makes his wish, the speaker realizes that he can’t be anywhere near her because everything he touches turns to gold. This is, in effect, the end of their early passionate physical relationship, since the speaker realizes that she will become a gold statue if he touches her.
While in the poem this is a practical realization (the speaker realizes she would literally become an object), it also demonstrates the dwindling of passion and profound hurt that can result from one person’s selfishness. The speaker also realizes that they won’t have children together, and then that he has to move out. In other words, her husband’s selfishness has robbed them both of the possibility of having a family together.
After Mr. Midas moves out, the speaker says that “at first, [she] visited at odd times,” but she and her husband become increasingly estranged, as he becomes “delirious.” Ultimately, the poem shows that Midas’s selfishness ends his relationship with his wife, as she can no longer bear being close to him.
Finally, the poem makes clear that both characters experience isolation and loneliness as a result of Mr. Midas’s actions. The last time Midas is seen within the poem, he seems to be completely within his own mind. He is isolated not just from his wife, but from reality as a whole.
Mrs. Midas also seems to feel a lasting sense of loss and loneliness. She describes, at the end of the poem, thinking of her husband and “miss[ing] most … his touch.” This suggests that even over the passage of time, she still experiences loneliness and longing. Each person, then, is ultimately lonely and isolated as a result of Midas's selfishness—though it is Mr. Midas, the poem suggests, who is the most profoundly isolated, as he is lost to the world and to himself.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-12
- Lines 21-30
- Lines 37-54
- Lines 61-66
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Mrs Midas”
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Lines 1-6
It was late ...
... snapping a twig.The poem's title lets the reader know that this poem is based on the Greek myth of King Midas, who was granted a wish that everything he touched would turn to gold. However, as the title makes clear, this poem will be about Mrs. Midas—the wife of King Midas, and a perspective not told in the original story. Also note that it's not Queen Midas—a clue that the poem won't take place in the ancient past, unlike the myth, and that it will be reimagined in a typical domestic setting.
The opening lines of the poem then establish that setting clearly. “It was late September,” the speaker says, placing the poem in a time of year on the cusp of winter. Symbolically, this season suggests that the speaker and her husband, too, are at the end of their blissful early days and about to enter a period of loss.
The speaker’s descriptions of her immediate surroundings and her diction (such as the contemporary phrase "unwind"), meanwhile, let the reader know that this poem is set in a modern context. “I’d just poured a glass of wine,” the speaker says, “begun / to unwind, while the vegetables cooked.” These lines suggest that the speaker and her husband live a conventional, domestic, middle-class life; it is an ordinary evening in late September, and Mrs. Midas is making dinner.
At the same time, several aspects of the opening lines introduce an element of strangeness into the poem:
- First, the speaker personifies the kitchen, saying that it “filled with the smell of itself” and, like her, “relaxed,” while “its steamy breath / gently blanch[ed] the windows.” This long sentence, which extends over three lines, enacts what the speaker describes, a moment of relief after a long day.
- These lines also introduce moment of humor, a pun, since the steam is said to “blanch” (which means both to turn white and to lightly cook) the windows of the kitchen. The personification of the kitchen suggests that not everything is as it appears, or that something, within this world, is slightly off.
- The speaker then heightens this sense of strangeness as she continues to personify her surroundings: she says that because the windows were fogged over with steam, she opened one and “wiped the other’s glass like a brow,” as though the window were a person’s forehead.
From the outset, then, the poem establishes a sense of normalcy or conventional life, and an element of strangeness, as the inanimate kitchen seems to be alive. These opening descriptions, which are rendered conversationally, almost casually, give way to a single sentence in the stanza’s last line: “He was standing under the pear tree snapping a twig.” Several aspects of this line are notable:
- First, it is the first line in the stanza that is also a complete sentence, and the first line without a caesura, or pause, setting it apart from the preceding lines.
- Second, it is the first moment in the poem where the speaker mentions a “he.” Although the reader might intuit that this is Mr. Midas, the speaker’s husband, the speaker doesn’t say this directly; this absence of a formal introduction establishes a kind of intimacy with the reader, as though the speaker is describing these events to herself.
- Third, the actions of this man in the garden are markedly different from the speaker’s actions. Where she seems to be in harmony with her environment, he is “snapping a twig” off “the pear tree”—breaking apart a living thing.
Finally, taken in total, these lines convey a powerful sense of whom, within this relationship, is seen. To “see” another means, literally, to observe them; yet it also means to recognize and understand who they are, to value them. Within this opening moment of the poem, it is the speaker who looks out into the yard and sees her husband; he, however, does not look at her or see her at all. This dynamic will be important in the poem as a whole.
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Lines 7-12
Now the garden ...
... in the tree? -
Lines 13-18
He came into ...
... started to laugh. -
Lines 19-24
I served up ...
... golden chalice, drank. -
Lines 25-30
It was then ...
... believe my ears: -
Lines 31-36
how he’d had ...
... smoking for good. -
Lines 37-42
Separate beds. in ...
... work of art. -
Lines 43-48
And who, when ...
... the streaming sun. -
Lines 49-54
So he had ...
... off, then walking. -
Lines 55-60
You knew you ...
... the last straw. -
Lines 61-65
What gets me ...
... stopped me dead. -
Lines 65-66
I miss most, ...
... skin, his touch.
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“Mrs Midas” Symbols
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Gold
The most important symbol in “Mrs. Midas” is gold. Gold symbolizes wealth—the highest degree of wealth. Within the poem’s contemporary context, the gold also symbolizes material objects within a capitalist consumer society. Mr. Midas’s greed for gold can be read as symbolizing materialism and consumerism.
In a way, Mr. Midas turning objects and living things into gold also represents the process of commodification, by which any natural element becomes, within a capitalist system, viewed as a commodity: something that can be bought or sold to bring the owner wealth.
The poem also plays with other meanings of gold. For instance, when the speaker notes that it is impossible to live with a heart of gold, she makes a pun on the idea that having a “heart of gold” means to have a heart that is pure and good. This idea of gold representing purity and the sacred (as in the golden chalice) becomes ironic in the poem, when the objects and living things that are turned into gold lose their true meaning, value, and vitality.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 9-12: “that twig in his hand was gold. And then he plucked / a pear from a branch. – we grew Fondante d’Automne – / and it sat in his palm, like a lightbulb. On. / I thought to myself, Is he putting fairy lights in the tree?”
- Line 13: “The doorknobs gleamed.”
- Lines 14-16: “He drew the blinds. You know the mind; I thought of / the Field of the Cloth of Gold and of Miss Macready. / He sat in that chair like a king on a burnished throne.”
- Line 20: “Within seconds he was spitting out the teeth of the rich.”
- Line 24: “golden chalice”
- Lines 32-34: “Do you know about gold? / It feeds no one; aurum, soft, untarnishable; slakes / no thirst.”
- Lines 34-35: “I gazed, entranced, / as the blue flame played on its luteous stem.”
- Line 39: “the tomb of Tutankhamun.”
- Lines 41-42: “his honeyed embrace, / the kiss that would turn my lips to a work of art.”
- Line 44: “heart of gold”
- Lines 45-48: “his child, its perfect ore limbs, its little tongue / like a precious latch, its amber eyes / holding their pupils like flies. My dream milk / burned in my breasts.”
- Lines 55-58: “Golden trout / on the grass. One day, a hare hung from a larch, / a beautiful lemon mistake. And then his footprints, / glistening next to the river’s path.”
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The Pear Tree
At the beginning of the poem, the speaker watches her husband take “a pear from a branch” of a tree the couple had grown together. Trees are often symbolic of life and growth, and within the poem the pear tree symbolizes the couple’s life that they have grown and cultivated together. When Mr. Midas breaks the twig and pear off of this tree, this thus symbolizes his beginning to break apart their relationship.
At the same time, the pear tree, as a fruit tree, is a powerful symbol within a Christian context. The pear tree alludes to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden, from which Eve picks the forbidden fruit. According to the Biblical story, this disobedience to God and picking of the fruit precipitates the fall from grace, as Adam and Eve are expelled from paradise.
The fruit thus also can be thought of as symbolizing temptation or desire. In the poem, notably, it is not the woman who takes the fruit from the tree, but her husband, Mr. Midas. This shift asks readers to consider the original story and the gender stereotypes implicit in it, in which Eve is viewed as responsible for the original sin of humanity. Yet the poem also reflects the Biblical story in certain ways, since Mr. Midas’s picking of this pear and arrogance and greed, set into motion everything that follows, including the loss of his happy life and his expulsion from this “paradise.”
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 6: “He was standing under the pear tree snapping a twig.”
- Lines 9-10: “And then he plucked / a pear from a branch.”
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The Light Bulb
When Mr. Midas first picks the pear from the tree, the speaker sees it “s[it] in his palm, like a lightbulb. On.” Often, light bulbs turning on (for instance, in a cartoon) symbolize sudden insight or awareness, as when a character gets an idea. In the poem, then, the lit-up light bulb represents Mr. Midas’s sudden granting of his wish, a sort of gained ability or capacity as he realizes he can change everything to gold.
Yet the poem also transforms this conventional symbol. At the moment in the poem when the pear resembles the light bulb, the speaker has also just described the natural light of evening, “the way / the dark of the ground seems to drink the light of the sky.” This image of the glow of light at dusk, and the earth as dynamically “drink[ing]” the light, contrasts with the static, artificial light the pear light bulb generates. Mr. Midas’s “insight,” then, is revealed to be a kind of false illumination.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 11: “it sat in his palm, like a lightbulb. On.”
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The Corn/Gold Teeth
When Mr. Midas comes into the house and begins to eat dinner, the speaker says that after she serves him corn on the cob, “[w]ithin seconds he was spitting out the teeth of the rich.” Here, the teeth are a metaphor for the corn, as the corn kernels come to resemble gold teeth once Mr. Midas comes into contact with them.
The gold teeth are also, however, symbolic. While they symbolize wealth (by suggesting the ability to get gold fillings), the symbol is rendered in such a way that Mr. Midas appears to be losing wealth in losing the teeth. The wealth they represent is excessive to the point of being harmful. Also, teeth often symbolize physical strength, health, and vitality. In this image, the loss of teeth symbolizes the loss of Mr. Midas’s natural strength, and the inevitable end of his life, as he is no longer able to eat or drink.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 20: “Within seconds he was spitting out the teeth of the rich.”
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The Golden Chalice
In the poem, the speaker describes her husband asking for a glass of wine, and how she watches as “he picked / up the glass, goblet, golden chalice, drank.” This list, as the ordinary wine glass transforms into something that looks like a goblet, then a chalice, enacts the inevitable change that all objects will now undergo when Mr. Midas touches them.
The golden chalice is also a symbol. A chalice usually refers to a cup used for the Eucharist, to serve wine during Catholic communion. Within Christian tradition, this chalice (often gold in Catholic mass) symbolizes the original chalice, also called the Holy Grail, that Christ drank from at the Last Supper.
Within the poem, then, the golden chalice is ironic, since the wine Mr. Midas drinks turns not into sacred blood (as in Catholic thought) but into gold, a reflection of his greed and selfishness. The chalice also suggests that Mr. Midas is at his own Last Supper (as in fact he is). This only heightens the irony of the image, since Midas, far from sacrificing his own life as an act of selflessness, is driven only by his own self-interest and attachment to the material world.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 23-24: “then watched / as he picked up the glass, goblet, golden chalice, drank.”
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The Child
In a particularly terrifying moment of the poem, in which the full implications of Mr. Midas’s wish are revealed, the speaker has a nightmare in which she has a child with her husband, but the child is made out of gold. The speaker’s description of this dream-child is truly horrifying, as the child’s tongue is compared to the “latch” of a door, and its eyes are compared to amber in which the pupils, like flies, have been trapped and died.
At a more literal level, this stillborn child symbolizes death, and the incompatibility of excessive greed and selfishness with the continuation of life. This dream represents the moment at which Mrs. Midas cannot continue to live with her husband, since she sees that he will only bring her death.
As a child made out of gold, though, the child in this dream also symbolizes the Christian image of the “golden child,” the Christ child, whose birth was believed to redeem humanity. Here, though, the child being turned into gold is monstrous and distorting. This nightmare image, then, symbolizes a kind of reversal of Christ’s birth, the opposite of redemption, and as the poem continues to play with and rework traditional Christian narratives, it suggests that, in this story, there is no redemption possible.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 44-47: “I dreamt I bore / his child, its perfect ore limbs, its little tongue / like a precious latch, its amber eyes / holding their pupils like flies.”
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The Glade
When the speaker decides that Mr. Midas “had to move out,” she drives him to a “glade” in “the wilds,” where they have a “caravan,” or camper. In essence, what the speaker means is that the couple has a campsite somewhere in the woods, where Mr. Midas will now go to live.
This idea of the glade, though, is also symbolic. A glade is a clearing in the woods; the word comes from the Middle English “glad,” which also meant “shining.” Clearly, there is nothing glad or happy about the situation in the poem (though Mr. Midas, within his own world, seems oblivious to how much harm he has caused), but the sense of this place as “shining” makes sense, given that Mr. Midas will turn it into shining gold.
Most importantly, this movement in the poem represents a kind of banishment or exile, building on the symbolism of the pear tree and Mr. Midas’s picking of the fruit. As a result of his wish and his actions, Mr. Midas is banished from his life to a place outside it, just as Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden.
Paradoxically, in going to a remote natural place, it almost seems as though Mr. Midas goes to the Garden of Eden in going to this “glade.” But when he gets there, he eventually loses his mind, suggesting that his version of paradise (which includes his wish coming true) is untenable.
Finally, it is notable that, unlike the Biblical account, Mrs. Midas is not banished with her husband. She can come back to the house and choose what to do. Ultimately, though, she too leaves their house moves somewhere else by the poem’s ending, suggesting that she experiences a kind of indirect exile as a result of her husband’s actions. After all, she too has lost their previous life together.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 49-50: “So he had to move out. We’d a caravan / in the wilds, in a glade of its own.”
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The Bowl of Apples
At the very end of the poem, the speaker recounts continuing to miss her husband at certain times of day and certain moments. “Once,” she says, “a bowl of apples stopped me dead.” The phrase “stopped me dead” is a kind of dark pun, playing on the idea of her husband stopping everything dead by turning it to gold, and taking its life away.
The bowl of apples is also symbolic. The fruit refers back to the pear tree, that symbol of biblical forbidden fruit, and her husband’s picking of the pear and turning it to gold. In this case, the apples symbolize the ongoing cost of her husband’s choice, and a state of ongoing loss or exile.
Yet it is notable that in this moment, in this image, the apples also seem completely ordinary, just a bowl of apples on this woman’s table. The speaker is by herself, not banished with her husband, and the poem implicitly suggests that she might pause for a moment by the apples, but then keep going. Unlike the Biblical story, then, the woman in this case is neither responsible for the fall from grace, and nor does she bear the brunt of its consequences. She is affected by it, but not entrapped within its mythology.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 65: “once a bowl of apples stopped me dead.”
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“Mrs Midas” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Allusion
There are several important allusions in the poem. Most significantly, the title—and by extension the poem as a whole—alludes to the mythological King Midas, a figure in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. King Midas was granted a wish that everything he touched would turn to gold. In the original story, he regretted this wish when he realized that he could neither eat nor drink, and Dionysus released him from the wish by having him bathe in a river.
The poem, however, changes the way in which this story is told. The primary focus of the poem is not the king—or, in this case, Mr. Midas— but his wife. The allusion, then, serves to point out how women’s perspectives were left out of the original myth. It provides a familiar framework that the poem reimagines within a contemporary context and from Mrs. Midas’s point of view.
Within the poem, the speaker also makes a number of allusions. Soon after her husband has made his wish, when she watches him close the curtains, she says:
You know the mind; I thought of
the Field of the Cloth of Gold and of Miss Macready.This first allusion, the Field of the Cloth of Gold, refers to 1520 meeting between King Henry VIII of England and King Francis I of France; both kings brought a huge amount of gold fabric to the summit to impress each other. The “Field of the Cloth of Gold” is also the name of a painting depicting this meeting. That the speaker refers to a story about Henry VIII is particularly important. Henry VIII is known for being excessive, violent, and self-interested; this particular allusion then, subtly aligns Mr. Midas with these qualities.
The allusion to “Miss Macready” contrasts with the first allusion in that it is less directly clear. The name could allude to the character Sharon Macready, a figure in a British television series, The Champions, that aired in the 1960s; the character had notable gold-colored hair. However, since the speaker refers to Miss Macready, this could be a private reference; perhaps the speaker is alluding to a schoolteacher, Miss Macready, who taught her about the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Either way, the speaker illustrates that this is how “the mind” works—by connecting present experience to past experience, and to stories and history that one has been taught.
Later, the speaker says that her husband is “turning the spare room / into the tomb of Tutankhamun.” Here, the speaker alludes to King Tutankhamun, or King Tut, a pharaoh of ancient Egypt whose tomb, which contained a huge amount of gold, was discovered in 1922. The reference works comically here, but it is also symbolically important, since the speaker implies that her husband is creating his own tomb, burying himself in gold that will ultimately be worthless to him.
Finally, at the end of the poem, the speaker says that when she visited her husband in the remote place where he has gone to live, he is “thin / delirious; hearing, he said, the music of Pan / from the woods.” Pan was a Greek god, identified with forests and wild areas, who was depicted as playing a flute. This allusion is humorous, since it shows that Mr. Midas, based on the mythological King, now imagines that he actually inhabits this mythological world, since he believes he can hear another figure from myths. It also, though, highlights how far Mr. Midas has departed from his own reality.
Importantly, all of these allusions show both the speaker and her husband thinking about their situation through the vocabulary of cultural stories, myths, and narratives, ranging from history, to pop culture, to mythology. In this way, the poem implies that myths and stories play a powerful role in shaping the way the speaker and her husband—and by extension, readers as well—see and understand the world.
Where allusion appears in the poem:- Line 15: “Field of the Cloth of Gold,” “Miss Macready”
- Line 39: “tomb of Tutankhamun”
- Line 59: “music of Pan”
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Imagery
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Repetition
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Simile
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Metaphor
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Pun
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Irony
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Parataxis
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Asyndeton
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Enjambment
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Assonance
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Consonance
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Alliteration
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"Mrs Midas" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Midas
- Fondante d'Automne
- Field of the Cloth of Gold
- Miss Macready
- Vain
- Chalice
- Aurum
- Untarnishable
- Slakes
- Luteous
- Tomb of Tutankhamun
- Halcyon
- Ore
- Latch
- Caravan
- Glade
- Larch
- The Music of Pan
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(Location in poem: )
“Midas” refers to King Midas of Greek and Roman mythology; stories about King Midas were included in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. According to the original legend, King Midas was granted a wish that everything he touched would turn to gold. He regretted this wish when he nearly starved to death, and the god Dionysus released him from the wish.
In the poem, “Midas” is the last name of the speaker, Mrs. Midas, who is implicitly the wife of the legendary king. However, the speaker of the poem is an ordinary woman in the present, and her husband doesn’t seem to actually be a king; neither is he released from the consequences of his greed and selfishness.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Mrs Midas”
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Form
The poem is made up of 11 sestets (six-line stanzas), all except one of which concludes with the end of a sentence. (The exception to this is the fifth stanza, which ends with a colon, as the speaker says, “I couldn’t believe my ears:” and then goes on, in stanza 6, to explain what her husband has told her.)
The regular form of the poem creates a sense of the story unfolding in a measured way, as though the speaker is walking the reader (and perhaps herself) through what has happened, step by step. This sense of regularity contrasts with the story itself, which is at once surreal, ridiculous, and disturbing. The form, then, highlights what is unmanageable and irregular within the story. At the same time, the regularity of the form suggests that the speaker is now, to some degree, free or detached from everything that has occurred, since she is able to recount it in this way.
Notably, the poem is also a persona poem and a dramatic monologue. The title establishes the speaker as the wife of the mythological King Midas. However, the poem diverges from some aspects of a traditional persona poem, since “Mrs Midas” is recast in a contemporary context, and the speaker seems to be married not to an actual king but to an ordinary, if remarkably selfish, man. Also, "Mrs Midas" wasn't actually a character in the original myth, since the original story left out any women's perspectives.
This use of persona and reimagining of the myth points out to readers that women's experiences were left out of the original story, and of many myths foundational to Western culture. At the same time, the contemporary feel of the poem makes Mrs. Midas's experience relatable to many readers, so that the myth within the poem can be read as a kind of metaphor for many women's experiences of being erased by their husband's or partner's greed and selfishness.
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Meter
As a free verse poem, “Mrs Midas” has no set meter. While this is the norm in contemporary poetry, the absence of meter is also significant; throughout, with its colloquial speech and direct address to the reader, the poem has the feel of a casual conversation, as though Mrs. Midas is talking naturally and simply recounting what has occurred.
In lieu of meter, the poem uses other strategies to manage music, pacing, and meaning. For example, throughout the poem the speaker shifts back and forth between longer and shorter sentences. These shifts give increased emphasis (what could be thought of as a kind of metrical “stress”) to the one-word sentences that occur, but also to the longer sentences as they accrue over the course of lines. Essentially, at the level of its syntax, the poem makes use of pattern and variation, which are also fundamental elements of meter.
The poem also creates another kind of musical emphasis through its varied diction. For instance, consider the following moment in the sixth stanza:
But who has wishes granted? Him. Do you know about gold?
It feeds no one; aurum, soft, untarnishable; slakes
no thirst. ...Here, the speaker shifts from a direct, colloquial address to the reader, to a one-word sentence (“Him.”), to another direct address. The monosyllabic words in “Do you know about gold?” then give way to a list of more complex and Latinate words: “aurum, soft, untarnishable.”
These swerves in diction, which register both at the level of sound and meaning, work much as meter might work in a traditional poem—to create patterns and then divergences from those patterns at key moments. In doing so, the speaker brings together a contemporary, witty account of her experience with words that are evocative, even strange to the ear, and the poem connects the everyday and mundane with the magical.
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Rhyme Scheme
“Mrs Midas” has no set rhyme scheme. However, it still is a very musical poem. It makes use of assonance, consonance, alliteration, internal rhyme and slant rhyme throughout, creating sound echoes, music, and meaning.
For example, in the first stanza, “wine” in line 1 (“It was late…begun”) finds a slant rhyme in “unwind” in the line that follows. Similarly, in stanza 2, the word “long” in the phrase “Now the garden was long” is echoed in the sound of “Fondante d’Automne” (the name of the type of pear tree that the couple have grown).
As the poem progresses, each stanza makes use of at least one internal rhyme, slant rhyme, or instance of assonance that approaches slant rhyme. In stanza 3, “blinds” almost exactly rhymes with “mind”; similar sounds repeat in stanzas 4 and 5, with “mine”/ “wine” and then “wine”/ “mind.”
Stanzas 7 and 8 include more internal rhymes, with “room”/ “tomb” and “eyes”/ “flies.” In these instances, the sound echoes work powerfully to connect the words together, as the “spare room” where Mr. Midas is quickly turns into something resembling a “tomb” (foreshadowing the end of Mr. Midas’s life), and in the speaker’s nightmarish vision of her unborn child, the child’s eyes resemble amber in which flies are trapped, connecting the life of the unborn child, if the speaker stays with her husband, to an image of death and decay.
The last three stanzas of the poem make use of instances of assonance that approach slant rhyme. In stanza eight, the /o/ sound in “own” is echoed (with slight variation) in “home” and “gold.” In stanza nine, the short /a/ sound of "grass" and "path" is reflected in “Pan” (suggesting that Mr. Midas is on a path out of reality, since he claims he hears the music of the Greek god Pan). Finally, in the last stanza, the /o/ sound of “sold” is reflected by "bow" and then, inexactly, in the word “most” in the poem’s penultimate line.
Since the poem as a whole has a conversational, colloquial quality, these internal rhymes, slant rhymes, and instances of assonance create a level of patterning and music without making things feel overly strict or constructed. At the same time, they create subtle layers of meaning. For instance, the speaker describes her husband closing the “blinds,” or shutting out the natural light (implicitly shutting out both nature and natural illumination or insight). Then, this /i/ sound repeats in “mind,” “mine,” and “wine,” as the speaker reflects on the way that her mind works, and calls attention to the idea of possession and ownership (through thinking about what is truly “mine,” and noting the expensive wine that the couple have purchased). These sound echoes, then, reflect and complicate the implicit themes of the poem.
Finally, the poem's sound echoes, slant rhymes, and internal rhymes ask the reader to consider how even the most ordinary words—and implicitly, the most ordinary things—can be, through repetition and variation, radically transformed in meaning.
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“Mrs Midas” Speaker
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The speaker of “Mrs Midas” is, as the title indicates, Mrs. Midas, the wife of King Midas, the character in Greek mythology who was granted a wish to have everything he touched turn to gold. In the poem, though, Mrs. Midas seems not to be married to a king, but to a more ordinary middle-class man; Mrs. Midas, the poem makes clear, is an ordinary woman who lives in a contemporary world.
Although the poem doesn’t specify the speaker’s age, Mrs. Midas’s dream about having a child suggests that she was a younger woman when her husband had his wish granted. And while the poem doesn’t state the couple’s nationality, some clues (such as the speaker thinking of Miss Macready, which may be an allusion to a character from a British television series, as well as the Field of the Cloth of Gold, a historical event connected to King Henry VIII) indicate that they are British.
There are also some important clues about how Mrs. Midas, at least at the beginning of the poem, relates to material objects. She seems to enjoy fine wine (her description of the Italian wine suggests she gave it some consideration), she cultivates French pear trees, and she says she “didn’t mind” the toilet getting turned to gold. All of these details suggest that Mrs. Midas doesn’t object to expensive things, and actually enjoys them. She is not immune, the poem implies, to the kind of materialism that goes so awry in Mr. Midas’s wish, yet Mrs. Midas also seems more measured in her approach.
Throughout the poem, Mrs. Midas narrates what has happened with a kind of wry humor and wit, and at times a sort of detached bemusement. Yet this stance belies the deeper undercurrents of feeling in the poem, such as the horror Mrs. Midas experiences in imagining having a child made out of gold, and the quiet sense of loss and sadness that pervades the poem as the speaker observes her husband becoming more and more unrecognizable to her through his selfishness. This range of feeling makes Mrs. Midas relatable as a human being, to many ordinary readers and women who might see themselves and their own experiences in hers.
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“Mrs Midas” Setting
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Both time and place are important to the setting of “Mrs Midas.” First, it is important to note that the poem is set in a contemporary context. Details like Mr. and Mrs. Midas having a phone and toilet make it clear that this story does not take place in ancient Greece, as the original myth did, but in a world recognizable to readers in the present. This invites readers to imagine this story unfolding in their own lives, and to consider how the myth and its implications are relevant today. The poem also takes place at a time after all this drama has passed; Mrs. Midas is telling the story having already gone through it all, which perhaps explains her rather detached tone.
Apart from the time frame, there are three locations in “Mrs Midas”: the house and garden where Mr. and Mrs. Midas live at the beginning of the poem; the “glade” in the woods that Mr. Midas eventually inhabits; and the new, unidentified setting that Mrs. Midas has moved to by the end of the poem.
At the start of the poem, several clues suggest that Mr. and Mrs. Midas live in a conventional, middle to upper-class house. Mrs. Midas describes making dinner in the kitchen (the dinner includes some expensive Italian wine) and looking out the window to see what her husband is doing in the garden, where he is standing under a pear tree they have planted.
It is notable that in the first few stanzas of the poem, Mrs. Midas is inside, while her husband is outside. If their house represents a kind of conventional life, at the start of the poem Mr. Midas is already moving away from this, and when he comes inside, he wreaks havoc on everything he touches. As the poem progresses, Mr. Midas has to move to a place even further removed from society; he goes to live in a “caravan,” or camper, in the woods.
It would be wrong, though, to think that this placement of the characters suggest that Mr. Midas is in some way closer to nature and the natural world. In fact, after making his wish he represents a kind of opposition to nature, since he turns every living thing he touches into gold. In a way, then, the setting in the poem works somewhat ironically. It shows how Mr. Midas has left behind his own life because of his greed, and how he has become dangerous to society. At the same time, the natural settings emphasize how unnatural Mr. Midas, and his greed, actually are.
Finally, by the end of the poem, Mrs. Midas says she has sold the contents of the house and moved “down here,” to a new, unidentified location that is entirely her own. This progression to a new setting shows that Mrs. Midas can no longer inhabit the conventional house and way of life she and her husband inhabited before; neither can she live in some remote area away from society. The poem implies that, after everything she has been through, she has to find a new way to live.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Mrs Midas”
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Literary Context
“Mrs Midas” was included in Carol Ann Duffy’s fifth collection of poetry, The World’s Wife, which was published in 1999. Like “Mrs Midas,” which rewrites the myth of King Midas to explore a woman’s perspective left out of the original, The World’s Wife as a whole reimagines traditional myths and stories from a woman’s point of view.
The collection in its entirety can be considered a work of feminist revisionist mythology, an approach dating back roughly to the 1960s in which writers engage with fairy tales, religious stories, and myths through a feminist lens. Duffy’s work in this vein connects her to poets including Anne Sexton, Muriel Rukeyser, Alicia Ostriker, Eleanor Wilner, and Alice Notley.
Duffy was especially influenced by Sylvia Plath, whose Collected Works she received for her 25th birthday. She would go on to edit an edition of Plath’s poems, and to write a piece for The Guardian about how Plath's work, with its revolutionary interest in women's internal lives, blazed a trail Duffy would follow in her own poetry.
Duffy's own career highlights the necessity of her feminist approach. When she became Poet Laureate of the U.K. in 2009, she was the first woman and the first openly LGBTQ poet to hold the position, despite the fact that the office had existed since the 17th century. In fact, Duffy said that she only chose to accept the Laureateship because no woman had ever held the position before, and because she wanted to support the visibility of other women writers.
Historical Context
While “Mrs Midas” explores both the erasure of women’s experiences and the harm that this erasure causes, it also explores the consequences of greed and materialism. Notably, the poem was written in the aftermath of what is known as the Reagan Era in the U.S. and Thatcherism in the U.K., movements led by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan and former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. These eras are known for their materialism, belief in free-market values, and emphasis on individual profit at the expense of the public good. For example, both Reagan and Thatcher are known for their cuts to public services in the name of private ownership and profit.
This context is important for the poem, which examines the cost of individual greed and excessive materialism through the framework of Midas’s wish. Such materialism, the poem makes clear, is antithetical to a society that values the well-being of all living things, and will have long-lasting consequences for the society as a whole.
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More “Mrs Midas” Resources
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External Resources
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Biography of Carol Ann Duffy — Read more about Carol Ann Duffy’s life and work at the Poetry Foundation website.
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The Original Myth of King Midas — Read the original myth of King Midas, part of Ovid’s Metamorphose.
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Feminist Revisionist Mythology — Read more about the movement to rewrite and reimagine traditional myths, stories, and fairy tales from a feminist perspective in this article from the World Heritage Encyclopedia.
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Interview with Carol Ann Duffy — Watch an interview Carol Ann Duffy from the day she became Poet Laureate of the UK. In the interview, Duffy discusses what it means to be the first woman and first openly LGBTQ writer to be Poet Laureate, and why she considers poetry to be the “music of humanity.”
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The Poet Reads Her Poem — Listen to Carol Ann Duffy talk about The World’s Wife and read “Mrs Midas” aloud at the 2013 Singapore Writers Festival.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Carol Ann Duffy
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