Gloria Lloyd

English 210
February 14, 2005
Sarah Alexander

Madeline’s Dream Becomes Reality

In Keats’ letter from November 22, 1817, Keats theorizes that imagination can

connect a dreamer to the ideal world that existed before the fall of man: “The

Imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream—he awoke and found it truth.”

Imagination is so powerful that it can make a dream become reality, as it does in Keats’

poem “The Eve of St. Agnes.” Madeline wakes up from her dream in “Eve of St. Agnes”

to find that her dream of her lover Porphyro has manifested into a “vision” of reality, in

her bedroom. In his letter, Keats implies that “Imagination” is more powerful than the

most powerful thing many of us possess—reality itself. Madeline wanted to be with

Porphyro, dreamed about him, and the “wish” came true. In this poem, there exists no

greater power than Madeline’s own imagination—when she, indeed, “awoke and found it

truth.”

Keats expressed his view of the imagination in this way:

“I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's

affections and the truth of the Imagination--what the imagination
seizes as Beauty must be Truth--whether it existed before or not...
The imagination my be compared to Adam's dream--he awoke and
found it truth.”

In this statement, Keats lavishes praise on the power of the imagination to

transform our everyday lives from the mundane to the extraordinary. Madeline’s dream

in “The Eve of St. Agnes” does indeed elaborate on Keats’ claim that the imagination is

wrought with powers that reality is not. In the poem, Madeline dreams of her beloved,

Porphyro, and then grapples with the fact that the dream has become her reality once she
awakens. As this occurs, the poem celebrates the ways that the power of imagination can

conquer both love and death. Madeline follows Keats’ visions of imagination by first

falling into an enchantment, then waking to a different reality, and then accepting her

original enchantment as her new reality.

The significance that Madeline’s vision wields over her is elaborated on in these

lines describing her dream state-- “’twas a midnight charm/ Impossible to melt as iced

stream… It seem’d he never, never could redeem/ From such a steadfast spell his lady’s

eyes” (282-7). It is as if Madeline has been cast into a trance, from which she will never

wake up. “Hoodwink’d with faery fancy,” she sees a vision of Porphyro coming to her in

her dream (70). If something is “hoodwink’d,” the implication is that it is tricked into

compliance—whether Porphyro tricked Madeline or not, she is undoubtedly in an altered

state of consciousness, creativity and imagination throughout the stanzas of the poem. As

Porphyro approaches Madeline’s bed, an allusion is made to the paradise of Milton’s

Paradise Lost, which of course found Adam and Eve falling into sin after eating the apple

from the Tree of Knowledge. Keats made his great statement on the imagination in

relation to Adam’s dream—which occurred in paradise. Since Madeline’s bedroom is

also portrayed as a paradise, the opportunity exists now for her also to “awake and find

truth.”

In stanza 35, Madeline laments the appearance of the earthbound Porphyro, as

opposed to the heroic lover of her dreams: “How chang’d thou art! How pallid, chill, and

drear!” she exclaims. The fact that the very same Porphyro seemed so much better in

Madeline’s dream, rather than in her actual bedroom, points to the power the creative

imagination can exert over one’s mind—Madeline knows exactly what Porphyro looks
like, but somehow, in her dreams she conjured a new, improved version. The real

Porphyro could never serve to compare to the one of Madeline’s vision. She exclaims,

“Give me that voice again, my Porphyro,/ Those looks immortal, those complainings

dear!/ Oh leave me not in this eternal woe” (312-14). Again, the power of Madeline’s

dreams is such that she believes the dream more than the reality presented to her—and

believes that anything less than the dream will result in “eternal woe.” However, she

soon grows to believe that the Porphyro with her now is also the Porphyro she met in her

dreams—as Keats said, “what the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be Truth.” The idea

of the Porphyro with her in her dream is so overwhelmingly beautiful to Madeline, and

the alternative so woeful, that she soon accepts that the dreaded, real image corresponds

with the image she cherishes in her mind of her lover.

After Madeline accepts that this Porphyro is the real Porphyro, they consummate

their love. Keats writes of the moment, “Into her dream he melted, as the rose/ Blendeth

its odour with the violet,--/ Solution sweet” (320-2). The dreaming imagery is present

even as the most important event of Madeline and Porphyro’s relationship commences.

With this act, the imagination of Madeline—her vision of Porphyro as her lover—

collapses into the reality of Porphyro, who is no longer just standing beside her bed but

becoming part of her. In this way, the real and imaginative realms, the physical and the

spiritual aspects of their relationship, are united in Madeline’s imagination, and their act

of lovemaking is enriched by both these worlds.

As Madeline awakens from the imagery of her deflowering, her regained

reasoning begins to question Porphyro’s presence in her bedroom. After the “moon hath

set” (324) on Madeline’s virginity, Porphyro reminds her, “’This is no dream, my bride,
my Madeline!’” As Madeline responds, “’No dream, alas! alas! and woe is mine/

Porphyro will leave me here to fade and pine,’” she establishes that not only can she not

distinguish between the “real” and “imaginary” aspects of their relationship—she has no

desire to, and in fact does not believe that Porphyro even exists outside of her own

imagination. The Porphyro that does exist, as established in stanza 35, can never

compare to her dream lover, and she would rather have her fantasies, which have left her

with the real Porphyro. She is only left to “fade and pine” after the imaginary, superior

Porphyro. In her vision, Madeline accepted him without question, but upon regaining

consciousness, she questions the validity of her imagination’s own reasoning. Madeline

assumes that the dream was just that, a dream. The fact that the events of her dream could

somehow transpose themselves on to her real life is a hard concept for her to grasp. She

assumes that when the dream disappears, Porphyro will, too. Rather than being upset that

Porphyro might have taken advantage of her in her dreams, she wishes that she were still

in her dreams to be manipulated. Rather than facing the reality that he is actually there

with her, she allows her delusions to guide her assumptions, instead of the facts of the

situation. In imagination, reality can be more jarring than reality actually is as

imagination ends.

By calling her his “bride,” Porphyro implies that he regards himself as the

fulfillment of her desires and dreams, and that he intends to marry her as the culmination

of her dream. The lovers, Madeline and Porphyro, escape. “They glide, like phantoms”

as they make their way past the “sleeping dragons all around” (353). Earlier in the poem,

the speaker claimed that if Porphyro told anyone of his love for Madeline, “a hundred

swords/ Will storm his heart,” along with “hyena foemen, and hot-blooded lords” (83-6).
However, despite the threat of “dragons” and “spears,” no human sound is heard as the

duo make a relatively peaceful escape from Madeline’s mansion, which precludes the

idea that a threat ever really existed at all. In fact, the revelers are now experiencing

fantasies—nightmares—of their own. Once escape is real, the entire adventure of the

poem can be seen as a figment of the imagination. Perhaps the obstacles preventing their

love were imaginary, and perhaps this explains why Madeline is so afraid that Porphyro

is not real once she wakes up from her dream. However, if the threat of revenge does

exist, it is only the power of their imaginations—how they imagine their love to be—that

allows them to escape so peacefully. Since their love is begun in an imaginative world,

they are free to choose their destiny and experience what life has to offer in a way that the

real world never will allow.

Keats’ statement of 1817, “The Imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream—he

awoke and found it truth”--- is dramatized in his poem “The Eve of St. Agnes,” in which

Madeline wakes from a dream only to find that what she desired to have in her dream has

become her new reality. The power of the imagination, as seen by Keats, is much in

evidence in the text, as Porphyro and Madeline conquer the real-life obstacles to their

love— reality itself-- and escape, “entoil’d in woofed phantasies” (288).