Feminism and Gender-Based Oppression
While "Mrs Midas" does not approach the theme of feminism directly, it is an underlying theme throughout the poem. At a structural level, the poem is inherently feminist in its retelling of the Greek myth of Midas from the perspective of his wife. The poem fits into the broader objective of Duffy’s collection The World’s Wife, which explores women’s perspectives with similarly themed poems with titles like “Mrs Sisyphus,” “Queen Kong” and “The Kray Sisters.” Mrs. Midas is a symbol of the untold stories of the women orbiting around the oft-told stories of famous men.
However, the poem also provides clues into a darker, related theme: that of men’s oppression of women. Mrs Midas is legitimately afraid of her husband, who was not only selfish but threatened physical harm to her through his wish, because he might touch her. This fear is built up over multiple lines. When he first enters the home, Midas underplays the danger of his wish and behaves unpredictably: Mrs Midas describes “the look on his face” as “strange, wild, vain” (Line 17). This reflects her husband’s selfishness and refusal to take her interests and wellbeing into account, but also suggests that he may behave in more dangerous ways. He also “laugh[s]” when Mrs Midas asks what is happening, again demonstrating his unpredictability (Line 18). Her hands shake when she pours wine for her husband, further suggesting that she believes he will harm her with his wish. Most obviously, that night she felt “near petrified” and put a chair against her door, indicating that she was worried about her husband entering the room without her permission (Line 38). In interviews, Duffy has highlighted this underlying aspect of the poem, stating that it is about Mrs Midas being “in danger of being touched and turned to gold.” Read in this light, Mrs Midas’s split from her husband is a feminist triumph, because she is able to achieve independence and find meaning outside of her relationship.
Selfishness and Greed
The original myth of Midas is often understood as containing a moral about the risks of greed. This is also explored in the poem, but from an external perspective that demonstrates how selfishness and greed can have an impact on other people. This theme is explicitly stated in the poem: "What gets me now is not the idiocy or greed / but lack of thought for me. Pure selfishness" (Lines 61-62). Mrs Midas suggests in this line that the core issue with greed is not greed by itself, but the way that greed destroys relationships and impacts others. Duffy achieves this emphasis by exploring both how Midas is impacted by his own greed in a horrific way—he must move to the wilderness and starves to death—and also how that affects his wife, who grieves Midas and the loss of their relationship and future child. This pain and suffering on both sides is contrasted with the goal of Midas’s wish, which was to gain wealth. Midas cannot utilize the gold at all, except as a “beautiful lemon mistake,” while Mrs Midas only uses the gold for the limited purpose of selling it and moving on. The central character states that she is not angry about his "idiocy or greed," but is instead angrier about his lack of concern for her. In wishing that everything he touched would turn to gold, Midas shows absolutely no consideration for his wife. Overall, this suggests that the man's ambitions and dreams were self-centered and did not take his partner into consideration.
Loneliness
Finally, the poem explores the theme of loneliness, in relationship to both Mrs Midas and Mr Midas. This theme emerges most clearly toward the end of the poem, when their separation has been fully established. The poem ends with the lines “I miss most, even now, his hands, his warm hands on my skin, his touch” (Line 66), demonstrating Mrs Midas’s loneliness because she can no longer touch or connect with her husband. After the husband has departed to live in the caravan, his wife feels lonely and abandoned. Mr Midas’s physical isolation is even more extreme – he cannot touch anything at all, without turning it into gold. He has to live completely alone in a caravan and has become completely “wild,” as symbolized by his hallucination that he hears the music of Pan, the God of the wilderness. The loneliness of both halves of the couple demonstrates the universal need for human connection.
In this way, we might see this poem as representing relationships in which one partner is emotionally absent. This is suggested from the beginning of the poem, when Mrs Midas and Mr Midas are separated—Mr Midas is in the yard touching the pear, while Mrs Midas is inside cooking. This separation continues throughout the poem: they physically cannot touch each other and they are emotionally at odds. For example, they have contrasting reactions to the wish: Mrs Midas is horrified and screams, while Mr Midas laughs wildly. The seeds of their differences are planted earlier in the “halcyon” days of their relationship, but the wish exposes their deep differences and inability to reconcile. While no one can relate to Mrs Midas’s experience of her husband having everything he touches turn into gold, many can relate to the feelings of loneliness and reflection that Mrs Midas experiences at the end of the poem, when even an everyday object like a bowl of apples causes her to reminisce about her relationship.
