Mrs Midas
Mrs Midas is the first-person narrator of the poem. She brings a new perspective to this retelling of the Greek myth of Midas by recentering the narrative onto the wish's impact on Midas's wife. While the Greek myth focuses on the pain inflicted on Midas through his wish and imparts a moral about greediness, Mrs Midas introduces a new theme to the myth when viewed from a feminist perspective: what bothers her the most about her husband's wish "is not the idiocy or greed but lack of thought for [her]. Pure selfishness" (Lines 61-62).
In addition to serving as a vehicle for exploring this new theme, Mrs Midas is also depicted as pragmatic and independent. She takes many steps to protect herself and prevent herself, her cat, or many of her household items from being turned into gold. She mandates that her husband move out and sells the objects he turns into gold, then moves away to create a new life. The poem celebrates the resilience and independence of women away from men who harm them.
Mr. Midas
Mr. Midas exists as a character whose actions are described by his wife with increasing horror and intensifying disgust. He literally enters the narrative through the front door, immediately turning doorknobs and window blinds to gold. Fine enough, perhaps, but once dinner is served and biting into corn on the cob results in gold teeth falling helplessly from his gums, it is an inevitable march to marital separation. The reader only sees Midas through his wife's perspective, which offers a fascinating and feminist twist on the original myth and on much of literature, since throughout history, women have more often been described from a male perspective, which is turned on its head in this poem. We only see Midas "laugh[ing]" at first about the wish, refusing to see the consequences of his actions and his fundamental selfishness (Line 18). While Midas explains himself, we don't hear what he says; instead, we only see from his wife's perspective that she "hear[d] him out." (Line 27). At the end of the poem, we again observe him through his wife's eyes; he is now "delirious" (Line 59). Throughout the poem, therefore, we are deliberately given little insight into Midas's thoughts, which is an ironic retelling of the original myth that solely focused upon him.
