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.