Comparsion of Andrew Marvell’s to His Coy Mistress and John Donne’s The Flea

Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” and John Donne’s “The Flea” have a similar situation going on. Both stories involve a man trying to convince his mistress to have sex with him. They each take a different path in convincing their ladies to stop turning down the idea of having sex. Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” takes a more serious and meaningful path. John Donne’s “The Flea” isn’t as romantic and uses a metaphor to try and convince the mistress in the story to have sex.

Marvell’s speaker believes that the woman is just wasting precious time by not sleeping with him. He loves her deeply and tries to convince her by speaking romantically to her, “An hundred years should go to praise/ Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;/ Two hundred to adore each breast, / But thirty thousand to the rest.” The speaker tells the woman that they are not immortal and will eventually grow old and die. He reminds her that the time they have left together should be spent having sex while they are still young and attractive. Marvell’s speaker’s argument sound like it is more about his love for this woman than just a sexual desire and attraction. I think this was a pretty good argument that may have changed the woman’s mind. He spoke passionately to her and that could have tugged at her heart and made her realize that life is too short.

Donne’s speaker seems to be arguing more out of a sexual desire than out of love. His argument to his mistress about having sex was neither raw nor moving. Instead of speaking intimately to the woman, he uses a flea as a metaphor of their love “It sucked me first, and now sucks thee, /And in this flea our two bloods mingled be; / Thou know’st that this cannot be said /A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead.” The argument made by Donne’s speaker was not a very convincing one. It was pretty clear that the woman didn’t take the man’s argument seriously as she just casually crushes the flea, “Cruel and sudden, hast thou since/ Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?” I don’t believe the woman changed her mind about chastity.

Both Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” and John Donne’s “The Flea” find a similar flaw in the argument of chastity. In their own way each story mentions that life is too short to not have sex. In “The Flea”, the shortness of their lives is tied in a way to the flea’s life, “Though use make you apt to kill me, / Let not to that, self-murder added be, / And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.” In “To His Coy Mistress”, the narrator brings up how short life is as a reminder “But at my back I always hear/ Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;/ And yonder all before us lie/ Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found”. “To His Coy Mistress” includes a more effective and serious argument that is out of love for his mistress. The speaker wants to take his love to a deeper level. John Donne’s story can not be taken as seriously and isn’t as meaningful.