First Stanza: “Mark but this flea, and mark in this”
In the first stanza of Donne’s “The Flea,” the speaker asks the woman to think about how little and insignificant would be the loss of her virginity. He compares it to the prick of a fleabite. He then remarks that first the flea bit him and then it bit her, both times sucking out some of their blood, which means that their blood in “mingl[ing] in the flea’s body.
The speaker then uses a twisted kind of reasoning, saying that their blood mingling in the flea’s body is not considered “a sin, nor shame” and not loss of virginity. Yet if they had intercourse, they would also cause bodily fluids to “mingle” and that is less than the mingling of blood in the flea. He wants to girl to accept his reasoning that they have essentially already had sex by allowing the flea to cause their bloods to conjoin.
Second Stanza: “O stay, three lives in one flea spare”
The woman starts to whack the flea, but the speaker stops her and then begins another report of absurdity, likening the fleabite to their having sexual intercourse. He audaciously groans, “O stay, three lives in one flea spare, / Where we almost, yea, more than married are.”
The three lives in the flea, of course, are the speaker, the woman, and the flea itself. And since they are, in the speaker’s warped reckoning, having sex in the flea’s body, they are, in fact, “more than married,” although they are obviously not married at all.
The speaker claims metaphorically that the flea is their “marriage bed, and marriage temple.” He then dramatizes her attempt to kill the flea by calling her act “self-murder” and “sacrilege” and that she would acquire “three sins in killing three.” He exaggerates that if she kills the flea, she will be killing not only herself, but also the speaker and the flea.
Third Stanza: “Cruel and sudden, hast thou since”
The woman does not fall for the specious claims made by her would-be seducer as she suddenly squashes the flea, which squirts the blood on her fingers. The speaker acts alarmed that she could be so cruel and that she would be so careless as not to follow the logic of surrendering to him sexually.
The woman has thrown his logic back in his face by remarking that they are not dead even though the flea is. And while the speaker has to concede that point, he then moves on to another point by turning the argument on her. He says in effect, by killing the flea, she can realize how useless fears are. She should not fear loss of her honor if she gives in and surrenders her virginity to him. He argues that the amount of honor she will lose is just the same amount of blood the flea took from her.
 |
