Summary
The poem begins in late September with Mrs Midas standing in the kitchen of her home. She had just poured a glass of wine and was relaxing while the vegetables cooked. She opens one of the windows and looks out to the yard, where she sees a figure standing under a pear tree snapping a twig.
Analysis
The title makes clear that the poem is connected to the Greek myth of Midas. However, the first stanza does not contain any direct links to the myth, seemingly indicating that the poem will be only loosely connected to the original myth; later stanzas will reveal that it is actually a direct retelling of the myth. The stanza does not directly reference Midas, gold, or the Greek gods, and does not appear to be set in ancient Greece. The wife depicted in the poem, Mrs Midas, is cooking in a kitchen and pouring wine from a bottle, looking out on a field. The references to the kitchen and its glass windows and to wine in a corked bottle suggest a more modern setting, which is further developed in later stanzas. However, there are already multiple, subtle references to the myth throughout this somewhat mysterious first stanza. For example, Mrs Midas is drinking wine. Wine is a common theme in Greek mythology and Dionysus is specifically the god of wine and revelry, which provides an implicit reference to the myth since it was Dionysus who granted Midas his wish to have everything he touched turn to gold.
Duffy utilizes enjambment to emphasize a relaxed tone before Midas arrives and disrupts Mrs Midas’s happiness. The sentences 'unwind' over multiple line breaks to create this sense of flow and calm. For example, there is a line break between “begun / to unwind,” structurally lengthening this description of relaxation. Similarly, there is a line break between “steamy breath / gently blanching,” slowly drawing out the description of the kitchen filling with warmth and steam. The use of assonance—the repetition of similar-sounding words or syllables—with the words “wine” and “unwind” also helps the images come together to create a general tone of relaxation.
However, the first stanza also subtly foreshadows the tension and conflict in the poem by noting that the warmth of the kitchen “gently blanch[ed]” the windows. This metaphor primarily plays on the concept of blanching vegetables, which means scalding them in boiling water or steam for a short time and then plunging them into ice water to help reduce loss of texture and flavor. However, it also suggests conflict in two ways. First, it establishes a contrast between the gentle warmth of the kitchen (compared to the steam in the blanching process) and Mrs Midas’s shocking discovery of her husband’s wish (the discovery can be compared to the ice-cold water that is part of the blanching process). Second, “blanching” has a second definition outside of the cooking context: to “flinch or grow pale from shock, fear or a similar emotion.” This definition similarly foreshadows the shock and fear that Mrs Midas will soon face. Finally, as Mrs Midas personifies the window —she “wiped” its “glass like a brow”—the personification of an object, and in particular the relationship between that object and physical touch, foreshadows that she ironically will no longer be able to touch her husband without being turned into gold. The relaxed, calm sense of the first stanza helps give power to each later stanza, particularly the fifth, when the mood suddenly switches to tense and angry as Mrs Midas absorbs what her husband has done.
Further establishing the focus on the wife rather than the historical figure, which is a persistent theme through the collection The World’s Wife, the husband is not mentioned until the last line of the stanza. Unlike the other lines, which break in the middle of sentences to create this relaxed tone, the final line is a single sentence standing alone: “He was standing under the pear tree snapping a twig.” The violent connotation of the word “snapping” juxtaposes with the calm tone of the first stanza and the diction, particularly with the word “gently.” This signifies a shift in both the focus and tone of the poem. It also creates a dichotomy between Mrs Midas’s life and character—which is described as relaxed, “gentl[e],” and thoughtful—and that of her husband, who, based on his wish, we see as impulsive and greedy.
