Sexual Persuasion
"The Flea" by John Donne, and “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvel, are two greatly similar poems about expressing love through sex. In both poems the speakers propose a sinful offer that they back up with reasonable arguments. In “The Flea”, the narrator is trying to persuade a woman to have sex with him by symbolizing a flea, while the narrator in “To His Coy Mistress” is using the idea of carpe diem to convince his lover that she must take advantage of her youth and surrender her virginity. The men design the arguments to induce thoughts of sensual nature that can be used to trick the women into accepting their sexual offers. Though the poems display their themes in different styles, both poems use clever metaphors, symbols and imagery to present a persuasive approach.
While “The Flea” seems to be a rather shallow attempt to get a lover into bed, the powerful imagery and symbolism lends the poem to a much deeper analysis. Donne utilizes the most common yet filthy creature, a flea, in an attempt to bestow upon his lover a feeling of not only unity, but, ultimately, an obligation to sleep with him. The flea represents an imaginative metaphor that extends throughout the poem and incorporates great irony as the creature bites both of the lovers and feasts on the mingling of their blood. The speaker uses this imagery of the physical merging of the two lovers’ blood to evoke a sense of literal unity. He states, “And in this flea our two bloods mingled be” and goes on to argue that the flea is more permissive than the lovers are as he delights in the physical blending of the two (Donne, 748). However, the speaker’s lover kills the flea which “purpled thy nail in blood of innocence” and the narrator claims that her fear of losing her dignity by sleeping with him, is false (Donne, 748). In the last stanza he argues that no greater honor is lost by giving into temptation than by the simple act of killing the flea. Donne skillfully seduces the morality of abstinence and the idea of marriage as a holy union to create a witty argument. This reverses the woman’s concepts to create an admissible contention for the sinful act of premarital sex.
Marvell also uses symbolism, metaphor and imagery in “To His Coy Mistress” to create a compelling argument in which the speaker attempts to persuade his lover to relinquish her virginity. For instance, lines 11-12 read, "My vegetable love should grow / Vaster than empires, and more slow" (Marvell, 727). These metaphor relates the narrator's love to a slow-growing vegetable, implying that the couple’s love for one another will grow slowly, yet deeply and vastly. In the line “Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side / Should’st rubies find…” Marvell is symbolizing virginity as rubies to give his lover the sense that her chastity is a persevered honor (Marvell, 727). The imagery presented within the lines that state “We would sit down and think which way / To walk, and pass our long love’s day” creates a peaceful scene, free of the pressures of aging (Marvell, 727). The walking indicates calmness while sitting and contemplating which way to walk on their long day displays a carefree attitude. These images soothe the reader into a passiveness that the narrator is trying to create.
Although the authors make different approaches, both Donne and Marvell portray the same concept within their poems by using significant literary devices such a symbolism, imagery and metaphors. Donne exercises a very logical method by utilizing the metaphor of the flea to represent the couple within his poem, while Marvell plays on the notion of carpe diem – the idea that the lovers only have so much time to be sexually intimate.