The Flea: Themes | SparkNotes

Societal Constraints on Female Sexuality

The speaker’s entire address to his mistress aims to break down her resistance so that she will agree to have sex with him. If his mistress seems reluctant to do so, it could be because she isn’t all that interested in the speaker. More likely, however, is that his mistress feels constrained in her sexuality. In the Renaissance, women—and especially high-born women—were expected to preserve their virginity until marriage. The speaker implicitly acknowledges this societal expectation in the first stanza, where he downplays concern about sex before marriage (lines 5–9):

Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
   Yet this enjoys before it woo,
   And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do.

The speaker references the way his blood is mingled with that of his mistress inside the flea. It is this mingling of body fluids that he claims is neither “sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead.” Key here, however, is the speaker’s suggestive reference to the quasi-sexual advances of the flea, which sucked their blood before it deigned to “woo” either of them. In making this point, the speaker expresses his jealousy of the flea. Unlike the insect, he knows it’s much more problematic for him to access his mistress’s body without properly “wooing” her first. In this moment of desire, then, he obliquely recognizes the social constraints on his mistress’s sexuality.

Sex as a Holy Act of Union

A key claim implicit in the speaker’s address to his mistress is that sex is a holy act of union. In the first stanza, the speaker begins by rejecting the language of sin and shame. He declares that the mingling of their blood inside the flea “cannot be said / A sin, nor shame” (lines 5–6). The speaker advances this argument in the second stanza, where he suggests a spiritual valence to the union of their blood (lines 10–11):

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, nay more than married are.

Here, the speaker bids his mistress to “stay” her hand and not kill the flea. He justifies this request by indicating that the flea now bears “three lives in one.” This numerological notion of three-in-one recalls the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which defines God as existing in three divine persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Despite being distinct, these persons are united through the notion of consubstantiality, meaning they share the same eternal essence. The speaker applies the logic of consubstantiality to the mingling of his and his mistress’s blood within the flea. Spiritually united in and through the flea, the speaker uses theological reasoning to imply that sex is a holy act of union.

The Intimate Relationship between Sex and Death

In “The Flea,” the intimate relationship between sex and death plays out in both figurative and literal ways. On the figurative level, this relationship arises in the speaker’s use of wordplay. Consider, for example, lines 16–18:

Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Here, the speaker urges his mistress not to kill the flea. Since the insect contains both their blood, killing it would involve killing the speaker as well as committing “self-murder.” Yet in the seventeenth century, killing was a common pun for intercourse. To “kill” meant to have sex, and to “die” meant to orgasm. This sexually charged language of death reappears in the final stanza, after the speaker’s mistress has literally killed the flea (lines 27–27):

Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,
Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

The speaker argues that the flea’s death did minimal harm to her person, and that losing her virginity will do similarly minimal harm to her honor. Here again, the idea of death cheekily references sex: the speaker hopes the flea’s literal death might enable him, figuratively, to “[take] life from” his mistress.

Previous section Setting Next section Motifs