The Flea

THE FLEA.
by John Donne

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

In this poem, John Donne uses physical imagery, in this case an insect, to represent a potential solution to a problem in the relationship of a man and a woman. Throughout the poem, the man is trying to convince the woman to have sex with him. Why she does not want to do this is unknown and irrelevant, the fact of the matter is that they disagree on the fact that they should participate in intercourse.

Donne makes it clear that he is speaking to someone in the first stanza. This is revealed by his choice of diction. "Mark but this flea" He is basically telling somebody to look at this insect because it is relative to what I am about to say. The flea itself is insignificant to the man, he believes it is just a flea. The same way that intercourse is "just intercourse." He diminishes the woman's virginity. (The flea is just a flea, Your blodd inside the flea is just blood, your blood is just blood.) He uses the woman's blood that would come from disruption of the hymen due to the fact that she is a virgin, as a reference to the same blood that is now inside of the flea, the same blood she has chosen to deny him.

When Donne refers to the mixing of the blood between the two of them, by the flea, he views this as some kind of "go signal." Their blood has been combined, therefore they are as good as married, or even more than married. He sais this because once a couple is married, they are "allowed" to have intercourse. His arguement is that their body fluids are mixed within the flea, so why shouldn't they be mixed physically through sex?