Summary
Mrs Midas decides that her husband must move out of the house. She drives him to a caravan, a covered vehicle that is equipped for living in, which they own in the nearby woods. She drives home alone, referring to herself as “the woman who married the fool / who wished for gold” (Lines 52-53). For some period of time, she occasionally visits her husband in the woods. She makes sure to park the car far away and then walk to the caravan.
Analysis
This stanza explores the ironic consequences of Midas’s wish: he wanted gold to pursue riches in society, but he is now forced to live in the wilderness with no belongings. The word caravan has a double meaning; in British English, it is used to convey a trailer or other covered vehicle that can serve as living quarters. However, it more commonly means a group of travelers on a journey together or a group of vehicles traveling in a file. This juxtaposes with Midas’s isolation. Duffy plays on this double meaning by describing the caravan as “a glade of its own”: it is both totally alone and immersed in nature.
The stanza can also be read as a description of the process of Mrs Midas moving on from her husband and establishing her independence. “So he had to move out.” creates a sense of dismissing the past and moving on. It is a blunt, short sentence that is matter-of-fact, reflecting Mrs Midas’s pragmatic acknowledgment of her husband’s wish and its drastic consequences. She visited him “at first,” foreshadowing that she will eventually stop visiting. She also visits at “odd times,” not allowing her husband to disrupt the new schedule of her independent life. The stanza also emphasizes the physical and emotional distance between the husband and wife by noting that she “park[ed] the car a good way off.” This is to prevent Midas from turning the car into gold and stranding Mrs Midas in the woods, but it also symbolically represents the deep emotional distance between them due to Midas’s wish. Midas is now associated with the golden caravan, isolated and stuck in the woods; Mrs Midas is associated with the car, which allows her transportation, mobility, and freedom.
However, Mrs Midas describes herself in the middle of the stanza in terms of her husband, speaking of herself in the third person as “the woman who married the fool / who wished for gold.” She herself feels a connection to her husband’s mistake and shame over her decisions. The remainder of the stanza, and of the poem, represents breaking away from her past life. This description of herself as “the woman who married the fool” is something that she works both to emotionally process and to overcome. Therefore, despite defining herself in terms of her relationship, the line is only one point in a stanza that is entirely focused on Mrs Midas’s perspective and sheds new light on the myth by thoroughly describing the consequences of Midas’s wish from his wife’s perspective, which is lacking in the original story.
