The Flea: Motifs | SparkNotes

Comparisons

The speaker makes frequent comparisons throughout the poem as he attempts to convince his mistress that having sex isn’t a big deal. He uses this strategy in the opening lines, where he says, “mark in this, / How little that which thou deniest me is” (lines 1–2). With these words, the speaker tries to establish how small an ask he’s making of his mistress. A few lines later he takes a slightly different approach to make a similar claim (lines 7–9):

Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Note the shift in the terms of the comparison from less to more. Whereas the speaker started out by emphasizing “how little that which thou deniest me is,” here he references how their blood is mingling inside the flea, which “is more than we would do.” The speaker then extends this mode of comparison, insisting that their mingling blood makes them “almost, nay more than married” (line 11). But despite using the same terms of comparison (i.e., “more”), the speaker’s point of emphasis shifts. Here, he insists that the mingling of their blood is more than a merely symbolic marriage—it’s a literal marriage. This literal mingling of their fluids means there’s no good reason not to have sex.

Religious References

Christian religious references appear everywhere in “The Flea,” ennobling the idea of the sexual act in a way that’s comically sacrilegious. In some cases, these references relate to common concepts in Christianity, such as “sin,” “shame,” and “sacrilege” (lines 3, 3, and 18). In other cases, these references relate to architectural spaces associated with religious practices, such as a “temple” (13) and “cloistered” walls (line 15), the latter of which evokes a convent or monastery. Perhaps most significant, however, are the numerological references to Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity. This doctrine functions through a logic of three-in-one, such that the three divine persons (i.e., the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) are spiritually united in a single God. The speaker invokes this doctrine on the level of form—for example, in the poem’s three nine-line stanzas, each of which unites three sets of three (3 x 3 = 9). The speaker also alludes to the numerology of the Holy Trinity somewhat explicitly in his description of “three lives in one flea” (line 10). This quasi-religious link between the flea and a tripartite God later becomes the justification for letting the flea live: “three sins in killing three” (line 18).

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