Introduction
The Flea is a poem that is all about one man trying to get a woman to have sex with him. The woman is probably a virgin. In his attempt to persuade him he would be his lover the man focuses on a flea, a parasite that has sucked blood from them both. He uses a logical argument (a conceit) to try and win her over. With their blood mingled now in the flea, the act being totally innocent, better not to kill it because that would be sacrilege.
The poem The Flea is a fine example of metaphysical conceit which has been composed by a renowned English poet John Donne. Here, the speaker of the poem is a young lover who has intense sensual feelings for his beloved. He has presented an insect flea metaphorically to represent the fine concept of his love and desire. He persuades his beloved about his tiny desire like a flea. He informs about their mingled blood inside flea which is more than their physical contact. According to him, his desire is a minor one that cannot lead her towards shame, sin or loss of virginity. He relates to her about their mixed blood inside flea as their marriage bed and their relationship as more than marriage. He stops her from killing the flee saying that it is a kind of self-murder and sin of killing three lives. He becomes quite upset to find his beloved killing an innocent flea with her fingernail. Her fingernail becomes purple with its blood. Finally, the speaker says that she has no fear of her sin and no loss of honour after killing the flea. Similarly, their physical relationship won't harm her or make her feel a loss of dignity. Their union won't harm her reputation.
Main Summary of the Poem
The speaker tells his beloved to look at the flea before them and to note “how little” is that thing that she denies him. For the flea, he says, has sucked first his blood, then her blood, so that now, inside the flea, they are mingled; and that mingling cannot be called “sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead.” The flea has joined them together in a way that, “alas, is more than we would do.”
As his beloved moves to kill the flea, the speaker stays in her hand, asking her to spare the three lives in the flea: his life, her life, and the flea’s own life. In the flea, he says, where their blood is mingled, they are almost married—no, more than married—and the flea is their marriage bed and marriage temple mixed into one. Though their parents grudge their romance and though she will not make love to him, they are nevertheless united and cloistered in the living walls of the flea. She is apt to kill him, he says, but he asks that she not kill herself by killing the flea that contains her blood; he says that to kill the flea would be sacrilege, “three sins in killing three.’
“Cruel and sudden,” the speaker calls his lover, who has now killed the flea, “purpling” her fingernail with the “blood of innocence.” The speaker asks his lover what the flea’s sin was, other than having sucked from each of them a drop of blood. He says that his lover replies that neither of them is less noble for having killed the flea. It is true, he says, and it is this very fact that proves that her fears are false: If she were to sleep with him (“yield to me”), she would lose no more honour than she lost when she killed the flea.
Form
This poem alternates metrically between lines in iambic tetrameter and lines in iambic pentameter, a 4-5 stress pattern ending with two pentameter lines at the end of each stanza. Thus, the stress pattern in each of the nine-line stanzas is 454545455. The rhyme scheme in each stanza is similarly regular, in couplets, with the final line rhyming with the final couplet: AABBCCDDD.
Commentary on The Flea
This funny little poem again exhibits Donne’s metaphysical love-poem mode, his aptitude for turning even the least likely images into elaborate symbols of love and romance. This poem uses the image of a flea that has just bitten the speaker and his beloved to sketch an amusing conflict over whether the two will engage in premarital sex.
The speaker wants to, but the beloved does not, and so the speaker, highly clever but grasping at straws, uses the flea, in whose body his blood mingles with his beloved’s, to show how innocuous such mingling can be the reasons that if mingling in the flea is so innocuous, sexual mingling would be equally innocuous, for they are really the same thing. By the second stanza, the speaker is trying to save the flea’s life, holding it up as “our marriage bed and marriage temple.”
But when the beloved kills the flea despite the speaker’s protestations (and probably as a deliberate move to squash his argument, as well), he turns his argument on its head and claims that despite the high-minded and sacred ideals he has just been invoking, killing the flea did not really impugn his beloved’s honour and despite the high-minded and sacred ideals she has invoked in refusing to sleep with him, doing so would not impugn her honour either.
This poem is the cleverest of a long line of sixteenth-century love poems using the flea as an erotic image, a genre derived from an older poem of Ovid. Donne’s poise of hinting at the erotic without ever explicitly referring to sex, while at the same time leaving no doubt as to exactly what he means, is as much a source of the poem’s humour as the silly image of the flea is; the idea that being bitten by a flea would represent “sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead” gets the point across with neat conciseness and clarity that Donne’s later religious lyrics never attained.
The Flea by John Donne The poem "The Flea" is a metaphysical love poem that has been composed by an English poet John Donne. This poem has been composed in quite an erotic humorous narrative form. The major themes we find here in this poem are love, sex and seduction. These themes have been created using a conceit of an insect flea. The speaker of the poem tries to convince a lady to sleep with him, arguing that if their blood mingling in the flea is innocent, their sexual mingling would also be innocent. There are altogether three different stanzas in this poem. The rhyme scheme of this poem is AABBCCDDD.
In the very first stanza, the speaker is telling his beloved to look at the flea before them and to note "how little" is that thing that she denies him. Here the speaker is comparing his demand for intercourse with a little flea. The speaker is upset about his beloved's denial and wants to persuade his beloved saying that sex is a minor thing as a flea. He talks about the flea saying that it has sucked his blood first, then her blood, so that now, inside the flea, they are mingled; and that mingling cannot be called "sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead." Here the speaker is relating to his beloved about their blood inside the flea. Their blood even has now mingled inside the flea. He tries to convince his beloved that the relationship which he wants to establish with her never be considered a matter of sin, shame or loss of virginity.
According to the speaker, the flea is swollen with their mixed blood. It has joined them together in such a way that is more than his desire of loving her in reality. Here, we find the speaker emphasising that their relationship has moved further than his desire for intercourse. When the speaker notices his beloved moving ahead to kill the flea, he stays in her hand. He asks her to spare the three lives inside the flea. For example his life, her life and the flea's life. He says that their mingled blood inside the flea means they are more than the married couple and the flea is their marriage bed and marriage temple. He convinces her that due to their parent's grudge, they are unable to meet and romance. In this way, they are nevertheless united and cloistered in the living walls of the flea.
Here, the speaker is his beloved when she tries to kill the flea. According to him, in killing the flea she is murdering three lives. It's suicide because she is effectively killing herself inside the flea. And it's sacrilege because they are married inside the flea. He calls his beloved cruel and sudden who has killed the flea with her nail. Her fingernail is now purple with the blood of an innocent flea. He asks about the guilt of an innocent flea that has been killed just for sucking a drop of blood from her. After killing the flea his beloved replies that by killing the flea no one of them has become weaker and nothing has been lost. So, there is no reason to have sex between them. The speaker uses his logic by saying that if she doesn't have a sense of fear and loss of honour after killing the flea, there won't be any loss of dignity if they make love. Their union would not harm her reputation.
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