Analysis Of Donne's The Flea

Does Donne’s The Flea reveal Donne is merely a product of his society?

A Marxist reading of The Flea

Donne’s view of women and marriage although seemingly attempting to break free of his society’s ideologies, ironically appears in The Flea to be subservient to the demands of the 17th century’s cultural superstructure

In his book The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx proposed that the economic ‘base’ of society determines its cultural ‘superstructure’. Though people think they are uninhibited by society, their minds are founded on the demands of their “social circumstances” . Bertens sustains that “minds aren’t free at all, they only think they are” . So whenever writers believe their work is based on “creative imagination”, what in fact, they

The process of choosing a partner began altering at the beginning of the 17th century. Whilst the upper aristocratic class still chose the marriage partners for their children, the rest of society permitted their children to choose their future mates. Additionally, the motive of choosing a spouse moved from the “consolidation of wealth, property, and political power” to being based on romantic love and physical attraction. The narrator in The Flea adopts the relationship based on his independent choice and physical attraction to the woman. He argues the woman should “yield’st to” his sexual advances, despite their parent’s antipathy. Similar to the way their bloods “mingled” inside the flea, he wants them to physically mingle. The fact he asks her to have sex rather than wed her suggests his motivation is immediate physical pleasure rather than the outmoded joining of economic power; marriage entails commitment as opposed to sex. Since Donne is abiding by the new attitude towards choosing a spouse, he must, as Marx predicted, be a product of his social

In the 17th century, women were expected to refrain from sexual activities until marriage. “For a woman, her honour in the seventeenth century depended almost exclusively on her reputation of chastity as a result of the traditional view of women as sexual property.” Although the narrator wants to engage in premarital sex, which would shock the readership at the time and render the female a Fallen Woman unfit for marriage, he uses marriage (an accepted ideology) to make the woman accept his advances. He insists the conditions for preserving the woman’s honour are intact and explains they are “more than married are./ This flea is you and I, and this/ Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is”. Orthodox Christians (prevalent in the 17th century) believed it a “sin” to have sex before marriage; however, the narrator is arguing a loss of innocence doesn’t entail a loss of honour because he and the woman are already married through the flea’s sucking of their “blood”. He reasons that sex “cannot be said/ A sin, nor shame, nor less of maidenhead”. Donne’s religious linguistic terms abide by the belief that a women’s honour lies in her virginity. The “temple”, a religious place, being made equivalent to sex, although arguably blasphemous, masks the narrator’s ideas that transgress society’s ideologies. Although Donne is attempting to challenge society’s principles, he’s still presenting his idea through the