Scent Of A Woman

11 Pages 2776 Words

are taken from Perrine’s Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry Tenth Edition, copyright 2001, Harcourt College Publishers, Toronto.)
One needs not look deep into the text to find the first of many sexual connotations peppered throughout the piece. While the flea does suck from its victims, this action explicitly carries a sexual connotation. However, more importantly to the message of the speaker, the sucking of the blood serves as a major point to his argument made to his lover. The mingling of the lover’s blood not only represents the “two become one” sexual adage, but also brings to light the 17th century belief that during intercourse, the blood of the two partners was physically mixed. Hence, the mingling of blood within the flea ought to destroy any inhibitions reserved by the speakers maiden.
The speaker then question’s her, “Thou know’st it this cannot be said / a sin, a shame, nor loss of maidenhead;”. Here, the speaker furthers his campaign, claiming that if blood can mix, as it does in sex, through such a miniscule flea, then sexual acts could not possibly present any more wrongdoing than to have been bit by a flea. His sexual/phallic imagery continues with the mention of a flee that “swells with blood”. The woman soon becomes annoyed with the speaker, and attempts rid herself of the flea, and her suitors inane analogies, but is warned by him to spare the flee, for it is within the flee that their “marriage bed, and marriage temple is”. Symbolic of the progress that the speaker seems to be making with this young woman, she kills the parasite, “Purpl[ing] her nail with the blood of [the flea’s] innocence,” and in response to his previous requests to spare the flea, she points out to him that neither of them were dealt any harm in the killing of the flea.
Here, the speaker creates his most cunning argument. He ironically agrees with his lover and states, “'Tis true; then learn how false ...