Kaitlyn MacPhee "Sucking out the Essence of 'The Flea:' An Explication"

John Donne’s “The Flea” is a metaphysical love poem in which the narrator is primarily concerned with seducing the woman he fancies into sleeping with him. The poem is humorous, and based around the elaborate conceit of a common flea biting both the narrator and the woman.

In the first stanza Donne sets the poem in motion. The narrator tells the woman he is talking with to consider a tiny flea that has bitten them both. He claims in lines 5 – 6 “Though know’st that this cannot be said / A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead.” Donne’s use of rhyming in this poem makes his argument seem more convincing: as the poem flows from rhyme to rhyme the smooth pattern of the sounds seduce the reader into feeling that his argument is more logical than perhaps it really is. In these lines the narrator is telling the woman that she must admit that the flea biting them and “mingling” their blood is nothing to be ashamed of. Donne’s alliteration on the words “sin” and “shame” drive home the point that the flea has done nothing wrong, and that if the woman was to do something with him it would not be wrong either. He goes on to say that the flea “enjoys before it woo, / And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two” (7-8). The narrator laments that a flea does not have to woo a woman before enjoying her, and indicates that he would like to (sexually) enjoy his woman in the last line, where he says, “And this, alas, is more than we would do” (9).

In the second stanza, the woman evidentially reaches out to squish the flea, because the first line the narrator speaks is, “Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare” (10). Here, the narrator is telling the woman to stay her hand, and spare the life of the flea, as well as his life and hers, which are now mingled together inside the flea. He claims that they are “more than married” (11) inside the flea, because their blood is mixed together. He makes a metaphoric comparison between the flea and a marriage bed in the next few lines, and attempts to convince the woman he is speaking with that the flea is their marriage temple, despite the fact that she does not approve of it and neither would their parents. He says that they are “cloistered” together inside the flea, and refers to the inside of the flea as “living walls of jet” (15). This is an interesting concept; it seems strange to compare a bug to a black mineral which is usually polished and used for jewelry. Donne manages to discuss the idea of a blood sucking flea in such a way that it seems eloquent, and almost beautiful. In the last three lines of the stanza, the narrator tells the woman that even if she wants to kill him, she should not be sacrilegious and kill the flea, and herself, as well.

Although the narrator tries his best to convince the woman not to kill it, she squishes it after he speaks these lines. She is not fooled by his seductive words, and clearly does not consider her virginity lost via a flea’s bite. Donne writes that she has “Purpled” her nail in “the blood of innocence” (20). The use of the word “innocence” is interesting in this poem, since the whole concept of the sonnet is to convince a lady to loose her innocence to the man! The sonnet itself may be an innocent jest, but it could also be taken as a more serious logical argument wherein the narrator relentlessly attempts to seduce the unwilling girl. In his poetry, Donne manages to establish truth by drawing conclusions based on demonstrable relationships. The subjects he contrasts, in this case the flea and sexual intercourse, do not need to be similar, they merely need to be associative.1 Donne effectively associates the flea with sex in order to convince the woman they should sleep together.

In the next few lines, the narrator reiterates in the next line that the flea never did anything wrong except to suck a drop of blood from the woman. The woman responds by saying that she does not find herself or the narrator any weaker now that the flea is dead, so obviously she did not commit “three sins in killing three” (18). Only the flea is dead. The last three lines of the poem are part of the continuing effort to seduce the woman. The narrator tells her that when she finally sleeps with him she will waste as much honour “as this flea’s death took life from thee” (27). In this simile the narrator assures the woman her honour will not be wasted so she should feel free to sleep with him. She is healthy and strong, and could put her life to good use by enjoying the sexual pleasure of sleeping with him. This is a trait of carpe diem poetry; the narrator attempts to convince a woman to sleep with him because life is short and they should take advantage of it while they still can.

The genuineness of the narrator could be debated, but it could be argued that the playful tone of “The Flea” could still be considered sincere. In the last three lines of the poem the narrator abandons metaphor for a more direct statement. The previously jesting tone of the poem contrasts sharply with the last few lines, which seem to suggest that relations between a man and a woman should be talked about directly and without shame.2 Donne’s poem appears a convincing ploy to seduce a woman into sexual intercourse.

References

Donne, John. "The Flea." The Harbrace Anthology of Literature. Eds. Jon C Stott et al., 3rd ed. Canada: Nelson Thomson Learning, 2002. 47.