Summary
Mr. Midas enters the home, turning the doorknobs to gold as he opens each door. He draws the blinds, which also turn into gold. Mrs Midas thinks about the Field of the Cloth of Gold, a meeting between two European monarchs that involved an excessive display of wealth, and of Miss Macready, the housekeeper in the Narnia series who valued possessions over people. Mr Midas sits down and turns the chair into gold. He has a “strange, wild, vain” look in his face. Mrs Midas asks her husband why this is happening, and he laughs.
Analysis
The third stanza begins with three staccato sentences that contrast with the long sentences that span over line breaks in other stanzas throughout the poem: “He came into the house. The doorknobs gleamed. He drew the blinds.” (Lines 13-14). These lines signal a shift in the poem from Mrs Midas observing her husband to her husband entering the house and becoming an active figure in the narrative arc. They also express Mrs Midas’s shocked state as she processes each of her husband’s actions without yet comprehending their meaning; instead, she observes the action in short sentences without commentary. The doorknobs “gleamed,” but Mr. Midas has not yet explained why—because they are turning into gold.
The stanza then makes use of two allusions, which are references to other events or literary works. The “Field of the Cloth of Gold” was a meeting between King Henry VIII of England and King Francis I of France which took place in June 1520. The meeting was a display of wealth by both kings and was arranged to increase the bond between the two nations. Although the kings were rivals, they organized this meeting at a neutral location and embraced in a symbol of unity. The event lasted 18 days and was notable for its display of lavish wealth, which included multiple uses of gold – the French pitched a tent that was covered in solid gold, the English wore glittering gold coats, and a priest who gave a Mass wore a cloth of gold that had been specifically borrowed from Westminster Abbey. In sum, the event works in the poem as a symbol of excessive wealth and grandeur. Paintings that depict the event also use gold and yellow colors to depict the scene, giving a more literal aspect to the illusion: Mrs Midas sees the gold doorknob and thinks of other golden images. The second allusion is to Miss Macready, who is a character in the Chronicles of Naria, a famous children’s book series by C.S. Lewis published in the 1950s. She is a housekeeper who is highly concerned with keeping the objects in the house in pristine condition. The allusion to Miss Macready reveals that Mrs Midas recognizes that her husband, with his fateful wish, has prioritized material wealth over his relationships.
This stanza also provides insight into Midas’s character through the lens of his wife. She describes him as a “king upon a burnished throne.” This builds on the allusion to the Field of Cloth of Gold; in addition to describing the chair as a “burnished throne” because it has literally turned into gold, Mrs Midas highlights the greed and arrogance of kings and how her husband also displays these same traits, particularly through his wish. She then describes his face as “strange, wild, vain”—this string of three adjectives separated only by commas creates the sense that Mrs Midas is taking in her husband’s facial expressions while in a state of shock. The description provides a sharp contrast to the description of Midas as a “king.” While the king is at the pinnacle of civilization and riches, Midas still appears “wild” like an animal, despite being surrounded by gold. Finally, Mrs Midas reveals that her husband “laughs” when she asks him what is happening, again demonstrating his selfishness—he is at first amused rather than horrified at her reaction to his disastrous wish. Additionally, Mrs Midas implicates the reader in this description, using the second-person “you” to describe her reaction: “You know the mind.” This connects Mrs Midas and the reader together in their shared observation of Midas’s behavior and its connection to greed.
