Mrs.

Midas
Carol Ann Duffy, a Scottish poet and playwright, is also the first woman and first LGBT who was openly offered Britain's
poet Laureate. The major and most important target of Duffy is about the taboos of society, exploring themes such as
sexism, equality, bereavement, and birth. She also addresses complex philosophical Issues about the construction of the
self from dealing with a wide range of issues, from the effects of racism, immigration, domestic violence and social
disaffection to the complexities of love. She also acknowledges the poetry of Plath while addressing the complex
psychological issues. Duffy is a non-conformist who conforms to the existing perception to debunk it.

Duffy was much aware of the gendered cultural constructs and she attempted to appropriate the great tradition which she
subverts by resisting the dramatic monologue. Her experimentation with intertextuality and way of voicing forbidden
female desire is appreciable. Duffy wanted to revisit actual historical wives in her collection "The World's Wife" where
poetry shifted from love to loss of love exploring the recurring themes of forbidden female desire, erasing the boundaries
of time and space.

In her poem, ‘Mrs Midas’ she portrayed the wife of King Midas, where she drops ‘Miss’ and carefully stages their despair
and disarray. Mrs. Midas’ is trying to highlight the inequality that women in Literature, and in real life, face. It is a
revisionist version of the King Midas story, told from the female perspective, where Duffy is trying to explore the psyche of
Mrs. Midas. Right from the beginning, the voice is of Mrs Midas who retells the story from her point of view. In literature
women are sometimes voiceless or only heard behind the men however it is clear Mrs Midas has the control and is telling
her story; through her humour and metaphor we are able to understand the breakdown of her marriage as well as the idea
that ‘wealth isn’t everything’ in a different. The poem tells the well-known story, using humour and wit to explore the
foolish nature of greed and materialism, historical erasure of women's experience and the consequences of selfishness in a
relationship.

Traditionally the ancient Greek myth was about a man who could turn everything to Gold with a single touch. Therefore,
this poem presents a contemporary situation in modern world, and not in ancient Greece which unfolds the life of modern
man proving that myth and implications are even relevant today. Playing with the myth of Midas, Duffy explores the
sadness of the wife - calling in consideration to the anguish, annoyance, and disgust she harbours for him concerning his
greediness.

The poem reveals how a greedy man's wish sent the life of the woman closest to him into turmoil. Within the poem Mrs
Midas herself insists that her husband’s wish is based on an act of erasure, “What gets me now is not the idiocy or greed/
but lack of thought for me”. Thus, the speaker understands that in the moment of his wish her husband wasn't even
thinking of her at all, erasing her from his thoughts. While the speaker takes her husband’s needs into consideration, he
doesn’t offer the same courtesy to his wife. It also forces the reader to consider the pain she experiences as a result of her
husband's actions, how her husband’s foolishness cost her the chance to have a child and become a mother. It represents a
horrifying distortion of familial love.

Mrs Midas presents the desire for material wealth above all else and thus the feminine despair of finding love. After Mr
Midas' wish gets fulfilled, he turned everything into gold but what Mrs. Midas wanted was a golden feeling and golden life
with her husband not the material gold. However, as Simone De Beauvoir puts it, Mrs Midas is “challenging society’s
demand for feminine behaviour.” We can find this reference when we see Mrs Midas’ strong willed determination to not let
her spouse ruin her life as she runs away and leaves without him after he turns psychologically ill with the greed of gold, “I
sold the contents of the house and came down here”. Beauvoir’s words echo, “I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too
resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely”

The poem also presents the feeling of loneliness and loss in Mrs. Midas in the concluding lines where she thinks of her
husband, "I miss most, even now, his hands, his warm hands on my skin, his touch"- suggesting that even over a passage of
time she still experience loneliness and longing. Mr as well as Mrs Midas was ultimately isolated as a result of Midas's
selfishness, though it was Mr Midas who was most profoundly isolated ad he was lost to the world as to himself.

Thus, the poem is about the specific consequences of failing to consider women's experiences and the way such
experiences have been historically subsumed by powerful men. The poem counters this erasure of women's experiences
and implies that understanding these experiences is necessary and vital. Therefore, besides exploring the psyche of Mrs.
Midas with a wide range of emotions including love, affection, detest and loneliness, the poem also invites readers to
consider what new insights they could gain if everyone's perspectives were accounted for and given equal importance since
past, sharing the ‘Her-story’ alongside the ‘His-story’.