Summary
Mrs Midas starts to scream as she realizes that everything her husband touches turns to gold. Midas sinks to his knees in despair. After they calm down, Mrs Midas drinks wine while Mr Midas explains that he was offered a wish, and wished to turn everything he touched into gold. Mrs Midas forces Mr Midas to sit by himself on the other side of the room as she moves some of their belongings, such as their phone, and locks their cat in the cellar to prevent it from being turned into gold.
Analysis
Each stanza starts with a grounding phrase that provides the reader with a sense of the time and tense of the poem, such as “It was September” (stanza 1), or “I served up the meal" (stanza 4). This stanza in particular emphasizes the use of tense by employing somewhat awkward phrasing, “It was then that I started to scream.” (Line 25). The first four words—“It was then that”—are grammatically superfluous, but they have a specific function in the poem: to signal a shift from the buildup established in the prior three stanzas. After three stanzas of description and observation, Mrs Midas is now having an emotional reaction as she recognizes the gravity of her husband’s mistake: “It was then that [she] started to scream,” the scream symbolically marking a new phase in her life and her relationship with her husband.
In addition to this emphasis on tense, there is also a sense of narrative gap: Mrs Midas “started to” scream, her husband “sank to his knees,” and something else may or may not have happened before the second line picks up “after” they had both “calmed down.” In other words, readers are not necessarily shown the full scope of the fight and reaction beyond these brief descriptive lines. This visceral and violent description sharply contrasts with the tone of the first two stanzas and creates a new normal for Midas and Mrs Midas’s relationship.
Finally, the stanza illustrates how Mrs Midas reacts to her husband’s wish, shedding new and humorous yet poignant light on the Greek myth. She makes him “sit / on the other side of the room and keep his hands to himself,” which is both a practical reaction to his new condition and a symbol of their newfound isolation and resulting lack of intimacy and connection. Mrs Midas continues with her practical response to the new difficulties of her husband’s situation, providing another list of actions: “I locked the cat in the cellar. I moved the phone. The toilet I didn’t mind” (Lines Lines 29-30). This mirrors the first description of Midas entering the home: “He came into the house. The doorknobs gleamed. He drew the blinds” (Lines 13-14). Mrs Midas’s actions reverse her husband's: while he touches everything and quickly turns it into gold, she protects the items by removing them from his reach. This symbolizes a greater difference between them, both in their personalities (Midas is impulsive and failed to think through his wish, while Mrs Midas is pragmatic and considers future outcomes), but also in their genders; Mrs Midas must deal with the domestic consequences of her husband’s behavior, which has often be true for women in history. Despite the harsh tone of this stanza and the gravity of its symbolism, Duffy also employs humor to soften the harshness, writing that Mrs Midas “didn’t mind” the toilet turning into gold.
