The Flea

In “The Flea,” Donne investigates the relationship between words and actions, specifically how clever and inventive wordplay can influence behavior. Because the poem provides no context—the opening line simply drops us into the basic situation, no explanation of how the two got to presumably a bedroom, what their relationship has been, and who and what they are to each other—all we are given is the very one-sided argument of the speaker desperate to achieve intimacy, ripe for seduction. The speaker hints strongly that she is a virgin (at least he believes she is) and that her parents do not see the speaker as an appropriate suitor. Part clever and slick lawyer, part suave and charismatic player, part crude and immature juvenile, the speaker works one metaphor after another, even invoking the very sacred rhetoric and imagery of the Christian church that labels premarital sexual relationships as the gravest of sins, in his ardent quest to claim the unnamed woman’s virginity.

The elaborate metaphor of how the flea, in biting both of them, has to some degree mimicked the lovemaking the amorous speaker pursues, but it is at once elaborate and vulgar. This is no love poem with flowers and birds and pretty music. In the carapace belly of the pestilent-ridden parasite, the two of them, or at least their blood, co-mingles. This is the speaker’s best argument—our blood has already mingled, so what would be the harm in having sex when, again, our blood would mingle as it already has. Indeed, given that medical science in the Renaissance held that in the act of consummation the blood of the lovers actually mingled (hence the possibility of conception), the speaker cleverly argues, why resist? In the flea, our blood has already mingled.

In a culture informed by the MeToo movement, the insensitivity, the sheer misogynistic predatory nature of the speaker’s rhetorical assault reveals either a calculating and superficial egomaniac or, and given the poem’s lack of any context a possibility, a charming roué who is mocking efforts to seduce women with charming words, the very clumsy nature of his metaphor revealing he is having fun mocking the ardent attempts of lovers less gifted with his level of irony. Is he attempting to coax the woman into bed by comparing their lovemaking to blood mixing it up in a flea, or is he making fun of such efforts, the woman presumably enjoying the dazzling display of quick wit and irony?

The middle stanza reveals the speaker as his cleverest (or most deviant), his argument at its most facile (or most twisted). He invokes the rhetoric and logic of the most sacred tenet of the Christian faith—the Holy Trinity—to suggest that the flea embodies that divine concept: fusing together the flea, the woman, and him. The sexual union he is striving so hard to achieve is offered to the woman metaphorically: the flea, in its own surreal way, is not only their wedding bed but also the very temple where God’s sacramental blessing would be bestowed: “we almost, nay more than married are” (Line 11). Because we are already “married” in the flea—in fact, the clever speaker argues they are really more than married as marriage is a sacramental and symbolic mingling whereas their blood is literally mingled in the flea--what is the harm is skipping ahead to the marriage night? In this, a more serious argument infuses the otherwise comic wordplay: the speaker acknowledges they could certainly play the wedding game, wait for marriage, say all the right cliches to each other in a ceremony, and hold off on their passion until society and the church gives their imprimatur—or we can go with the honesty and urgency of our emotions. Do not “kill” the flea—it holds you and me. The speaker, in his brazen and audacious argument, even raises the idea of having illicit sex by using the very language of Christianity itself: to not have illicit sex would be to commit mortal sin and even sacrilege.

It can be argued that when the woman pinches dead the annoying flea, she indicates she is not buying the elaborate argument, in short that she will protect her virtue. That reality, of course, does not deter the speaker. Rather he tries to turn tables on her decision: look, he says, you killed the flea, our blood no longer mingles, and yet look around. The tiny flea is suddenly put into a wider context: look at how insignificant the dead flea appears. By extension, he argues with lawyerly cunning, the loss of your virginity, the mingling of our blood here in this anything-but-sacred bed, would have amounted to no more a cosmic drama than the blood-engorged flea you mashed between your fingers. Do you see by your very actions how “false” (Line 25) all your fears are?

The analysis of the closing tercet (those three rhyming lines) depends on how despicable the reader sees the speaker. In the gentler reading, the redoubtable speaker tries valiantly one last time to reassure a woman who may still be inclined to be wooed to see how her worries, her doubts, her resistance are really hobgoblins for little minds. Our love can make a fine and private space apart from the noisy busy-ness of a world that is too judgmental, too intrusive. That reading leaves open the possibility the two will still consummate. The less gentle reading suggests in the closing three lines the speaker, realizing the campaign is over for the night, contemptuously dismisses the woman and her precious virtue. Keep your virtue for all the good it will do you, he snorts, taking it would mean no more to me than smushing the flea meant to you.