Summary
Mrs Midas serves her husband corn on the cob for dinner, but he cannot eat it without turning it into gold. He also turns the spoons, knives, forks, and his wine glass with wine into gold. Mrs Midas pours the wine with a “shaking hand” because she realizes that if her husband touches her, she too will turn to gold.
Analysis
Implied to still be in shock, Mrs Midas serves her husband the meal she has prepared, despite the fact that he is turning everything into gold. Clinging to the sense of normality and calm depicted in the first stanza, she attempts to serve corn on the cob “for starters,” although the meal will be very difficult to progress through. These lines also re-center the reader in Mrs Midas’s perspective: by beginning the stanza with the first-person I (“I served up the meal), Duffy continues to focus on Mrs Midas even though the most shocking action has to do with Mr Midas, who cannot touch anything without turning it into gold. This sense of normality established in the first line is quickly contrasted in the second line because Mr Midas begins turning the corn into gold “[w]ithin seconds” (Line 20).
The main purpose of the stanza is to describe the consequences of Midas’s wish by demonstrating that he can no longer eat without turning his food into gold. Duffy accomplishes this through the use of metaphor, describing the gold kernels of corn as “the teeth of the rich” (Line 20). Although this metaphor is mainly comical—Midas is able to constantly generate wealth, but ironically he is spitting out his food—Duffy also shows the more serious and frightening side of Midas’s wish from his wife’s perspective. She serves him wine “with a shaking hand,” perhaps afraid that he will accidentally touch her and turn her into gold. Overall, the stanza emphasizes the severe consequences of Midas’s wish through the use of lists and alliteration. Midas toys with “his spoon, then mine, then with the knives, the forks,” turning each utensil into gold. He “picked up the glass, goblet, golden chalice,” each object again turning into gold. This list and alliteration create a sense of motion and show the full breadth of objects that Midas has already turned into gold.
