"Mrs Midas" is a poem written by Carol Ann Duffy, a Scottish poet and former British Poet Laureate. As its name implies, “Mrs Midas” is a creative, subtle retelling of the Greek myth of Midas’s touch. In the myth, King Midas is granted a wish by Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and revelry. Midas chooses to be able to turn everything he touches into gold. However, King Midas did not anticipate that this would make life extremely difficult or that he would not be able touch any other human being or touch food without turning it into gold. Duffy retells Midas’s story through the lens of his wife, who is both comically annoyed and poignantly despairing that her husband has accidentally confined himself to a life of difficulty and solitude. Through this unique perspective, Duffy explores the underlying masculinity of the Greek theme and challenges historical conceptions of mythology. As such, this poem has been celebrated for its feminist message and its fresh perspective on an ancient, well-known story.
The poem is written in the first-person past tense, creating the sense that Mrs Midas is reflecting on her marriage. The final stanza shifts to the present tense, in which Mrs Midas continues to “think of” her husband at times. This use of perspective extends the feminine perspective of the poem and its complication of the original myth by examining the long-lasting aftermath of Midas’s decision. The poem also makes use of symbols and recurring imagery, including a focus on food and drink which both implicitly references Dionysus and highlights the consequences of Midas’s choice, as he was not able to eat food, a necessity, without turning it into gold, a luxury. Additionally, the poem adds a further layer of complexity to the myth by setting it in twentieth-century England.
“Mrs Midas” appears in Duffy’s 1999 collection The World’s Wife, which discusses various historical male figures—from Darwin to Pontius Pilate to King Kong—from their wives’ perspectives. This collection is a feminist work that re-centers the female perspective, highlighting how women’s stories throughout history have been obscured and under-recorded. Author Jeanette Winterson describes The World’s Wife as a narrative of “women behind the scenes, women behind the throne, women behind history.”
