‘The Flea’ by John Donne is about him trying to persuade a girl to have sexual intercourse with him, and showing her that it is not a sin. ‘To his Coy Mistress’ by Andrew Marvell has the same story as ‘The Flea’ but he genuinely loves the girl he is writing to, unlike Donne who just wants her to have sex with him.
The main themes in ‘The Flea’ are religion, parental objections, nature and death. ‘To his Coy Mistress’ is about death, time, time on different scales (biblical and limited) and also, love. The main difference between the themes of the poems is ‘love’. Marvell explains how much he loves the girl and that is why he wants to have sex with her, to move along their relationship. But, Donne only wants to have sex with the girl to show her that she is not committing a crime, and it isn’t a sin; this is how he convinces her into sleeping with him.
Sex not being a sin, is the central theme from ‘The Flea’, however, in ‘To his Coy Mistress’ the central theme is ‘Carpe Diem’. He wants to show the girl that she shouldn’t put things off and delay them; she should seize the day and do everything when she has the opportunity.
‘Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is; though parents may grudge, and you, we’ are met’, this line relates back to John Donne’s background when he got married. He and his wife, Ann More, secretly got married without telling anyone. This made her family unhappy, because he had ruined all chance of a career in public or private service for many years to come. Her family may have thought that he wouldn’t have been able to look after her without the work, they were wrong; they managed to have a small house in South London, even though Donne was out of frequent work for thirteen years after their marriage. Both poems are set out into three stanzas; however the line length and shape are different. They have the same amount of verses for different reasons; ‘The Flea’ has three because there is something different happening in each one. In stanza 1, John Donne introduces the flea, in stanza 2 she says she wants to kill the flea and then in stanza 3, she finally kills the flea. He has broken it up in this way so that it is easier for the reader to understand.
Andrew Marvell has split his poem up because he is building an argument between the girl and himself. First of all he has to start the argument; he does this by saying if they had enough time. Then in the second stanza he explains how they don’t have enough time. So, in the last verse he uses carpe diem and tells her that they should seize the day and use the time that they have now.
From these poems we can see that men were very patriarchal, where as, the women were a lot more passive and would follow the commands from men. In both poems, the woman isn’t seen to be speaking; it’s just Donne and Marvell talking. However, they do include her thoughts, but they both twist them around so that they can keep persuading the women to have sex with them.
The poems have the same shape but ‘To his Coy Mistress’ is longer than ‘The Flea’. The line lengths are more or less the same throughout the poem, and they are all medium length. There is no sprawling across the page, the writing is very content.
There are many poetic devices in both of the poems, these help towards illustrating the themes of poems. The authors use poetic devices such as similes, metaphors and personification. Andrew Marvell’s poem uses alliteration as soon as you start reading it, ‘To talk, and pass our long love’s day’. This use of alliteration is very soothing and relaxes the girl, by relaxing her when he first talks to her may make her vulnerable so that he can get the sex that he wants.
John Donne also does this but he uses sibilance. This has the same effect on the girl as Marvell’s did. ‘A sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead’, makes her more vulnerable because he is making her feel more relaxed. John Donne also uses repetition in the second verse of his poem, ‘our marriage bed, and marriage temple is,’ he is repeating the word marriage. He does this to show her how marriage is a good thing, and when people are married they have sex.
The poetic device that Andrew Marvell uses next is personification. ‘Time’s winged chariot hurrying near’, he’s saying that time will come and go fast, like a chariot. Again, this shows another example of carpe diem, they should grasp onto the chariot so that it doesn’t just speed past.
Interrogatives are the next device that Donne uses. He starts to ask the girl questions, but we know she cannot answer them because it is only him being shown as talking in the poem. As he is questioning her, he is also blaming her for killing the flea. Interrogatives are very useful to include in a poem because the audience can see exactly how the authors are feeling, which is the case for ‘The Flea’.
‘Sits on the skin like morning dew’, this is the second line in the final verse of ‘To his Coy Mistress’, this simile shows how he thinks they should make a fresh start with new beginnings. Morning dew comes at the start of a new day, and new things start to happen then. This simile can also be an example of carpe diem, in a new day they should seize the day and do what they can.
God and religion is referred to quite a lot throughout both poems, John Donne often talks about the holy trinity and sacrilege, whilst Andrew Marvell just talks about religion in general. Donne talks about it more than Marvell, this is because the girl that is with Donne is very religious, and he needs to convince her religiously to have sex with him.
In ‘The Flea’, when the girl wants to kill the flea, John Donne stops her and says that she should because she will be killing three people, as the flea has taken blood from both of them. He is comparing the flea to the holy trinity, ‘three lives in one.’ Instead of the church being their temple, he is saying that they have a marriage in the flea, and the flea is their temple. He is picking out small ways to convince her through religion into having sex.
As she becomes closer to killing the flea, he says ‘And sacrilege, three sins in killing three’, now he is trying to say that if she kills the flea, then she is committing a crime against God because the flea, to him, is like the holy trinity.
Marvell doesn’t use as much religion in his poem, ‘love you ten years before the Flood,’ this shows hyperbole as well as religion. The flood he is referring to is the Flood of 40 days and 40 nights, with Noah’s Ark. Another religious line he uses is, ‘till the conversion of Jews’, this is the line that he uses when he describes how long he will love her for; just before the end of the world is when he will stop loving her.
There isn’t much sexually explicit imagery in these poems, however in John Donne’s poem, ‘The Flea’, there is one line which coveys this; ‘And pampered swells with one blood made of two’. This refers to flea, when it swells up with blood like a penis. This is very different to ‘To his Coy Mistress’ because in that poem there is no sexual images, just passionate images. For example, ‘At every pore with instant fires’, the fires are representing the energy of passion between the couple.
I think that the tones of the poems are happy, because if they want the girl to have sex with them, then they can’t have an unhappy or stressful mood because that will not relax her or convince her very well. ‘To his Coy Mistress’ is more thoughtful than ‘The Flea’, because he loves her and wants to have sex with her for the right reasons. But in ‘The Flea’, he just wants her to have sex for his pleasure.
I think that ‘To his Coy Mistress’ was more effective because you could see that he really loved the girl he was writing to. His reason for wanting sex was to prove his love to her, to show he would be faithful to her and how it would make them closer. He also used genuine seduction, he wasn’t comparing their love to a dirty insignificant flea, he associates the woman with jewels, rubies and somewhere exotic.
Even though ‘The Flea’ was a very good poem, I think John Donne was playing mind games to persuade her into having sex with him. This is not a faithful or genuine way to ask a woman to have sex with them. And then he compares it to a flea, dirty and unimportant, I think that he would be making the woman feel cheap and easy if he did convince her into having sex with him.
