Critical review of The Flea- John Donne

The Flea- John Donne

The situation described in the poem is the narrator trying to persuade his girlfriend to sleep with him. Bearing in mind the social context of the poem, the girl is going to need quite a lot of persuading. This is where the flea comes in. The idea of sex being like a flea is sustained throughout the poem thus making it a sustained metaphor.

In the sixteen hundreds, fleas were just a common fact of life. Everybody had them, even rich people. I think it is quite a clever persuasive device to compare something that was such a huge thing in those days, to something which is just a part of everyday life that everyone had to deal with. This trivialises the situation the girl sees as being so important thus persuading her to sleep with her boyfriend. The flea is an unusual participant of a love poem but bearing in mind the context and content of the poem it seems quite suitable. I think the narrator sees the process of the flea jumping from his body to the body of his girlfriend and mingling both of their blood as being quite romantic. In those days people believed that babies were conceived through the mingling of blood so the fact that the flea has both of their blood gives the impression that the flea has done more with the girl than her boyfriend has.

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The flea plays quite a substantial role in the first stanza as the narrator tells us why the poem is linked to a flea. He tries to persuade his girlfriend that the flea has taken both of their blood which, in the sixteenth century views is equal to having sex and their “two bloods mingled be”. When the narrator compares a flea sucking his girlfriend’s blood to having sex he uses phrases like “how little”; this trivialises the situation. He tells her that if she is not ashamed of having fleas sucking her blood, she should not be ashamed of having sex because there is no “shame, nor loss of maidenhead”, which is a complete lie because she would obviously lose her “maidenhead” if she were to sleep with him. The narrator tries to make the girl feel sorry for him by pontificating about how the flea gets more sexual pleasure out of the girl than he does; “And pamper’d swells with one blood made two, and alas is more than we would do”.

In line one of stanza two the poet tries to implore his mistress to refrain from killing the flea. He is slightly mocking her when he says “three lives in one flea spare” which means he is asking her to spare the life of the flea which contains both of their blood. He then goes on to persuade her that they are practically married so they might as well have sex anyway and that the flea represents their “marriage bed”.

There are many sexual innuendos in the first two stanzas. The phrase “pampered swells” when referring to the flea could also be used to describe what happens to a certain male organ when he gets aroused. “It sucked me first and then sucked thee” could also have sexual implementations. In stanza two, the poet says that the flea represents their marital bed and them having sex. There are also religious references in the first two stanzas; the first being that they are “cloistered in these living walls of jet”. Nuns and monks lived in cloisters and had no contact with anyone from the outside world; this is what the narrator accuses the girls parents of doing to her. The word “sacrilege” is also used in stanza two, which is religious.

There are three arguments in which the poet’s mistress is bombarded with in the second stanza. The narrator tries to persuade the girl that they are practically married so they might as well have sex. He also tells her that if she kills the flea not only will the flea’s life be ended, but part of their own lives as well as the flea contains their blood. The narrator also tells his girlfriend that she should ignore what her parents think and do what she wants to.

In the third stanza, the girl squashes the flea and kills it. The narrator reacts to this by using words like “cruel”, “sudden”, and “guilty” to describe the girl’s actions and to make her feel remorse.

The tone of voice the poet adopts towards his mistress in the first quatrain of the last verse is one of mocking remorse. His argument changes perspective in the third stanza tries yet again to convince the girl to have sex with the narrator. He tries to convince the girl that having sex is as painless as squashing a flea. The phrase “Tis true how false fears be” tells the girl that she has false fears when it comes to having sex.

At this point of the poem, the mistress is probably is turmoil as to what she wants to do; she could have sex with her boyfriend to keep him happy and stop him complaining, or she could keep saying no and hold on to her virginity and dignity.

The poet recovers the argument by trying to convince the girl that having sex is as painless as squashing a flea. The “honour” of sex, which she has not allowed the narrator, has been wasted upon the death of the flea. All the passion she should have saved for him was spent on killing the flea.

I would not say this is a love poem, as the narrator never once says he loves his mistress. The entire poem is spent trying to persuade the girl to sleep with the narrator. If he really loved her, he would not pressurise her into having sex with him.