Akin to Blake's "Experience" poems, Keats' The Eve of St. Agnes discusses the pain one feels when imagination is thrust into reality. Here Madeline, trapped in a rigid pattern of behavior, is allowed a night of pleasure and thus beautifies it. Food, comfort, and a man's presence create an illusion of decadence, an idea ironically founded in inexperience that someday, marriage will free virgins from it. If such a fantasy were to occur in reality, however, it would spoil. The truth would efface the pleasant vision, and guilt from a lifetime of purity expired would coat the event.
For at least a moment, it seems Madeline's fantasy is quite different from Porphyro's presence: "there was a painful change, that nigh expell'd/ The blisses of her dream so pure and deep."
Soon the tide changes, however, when she asks Porphyro to "give [her] that [sweet] voice again" rather than act as if he has sinned. The couple decides that deserting their standards would be preferable living in purity with a tarnished dream. Because they sleep together they must consolidate the dream by fleeing town and the statutes that render such actions fatal.
The poem enforces the idea that reality is not a governing force but rather a function of the society in which we live. If the society is unaware of any social deviance, it can occur as vividly as imagined. Thus, even as the poem depicts an old Catholic ritual, it shows a virgin's illicit joy in both fulfilling her wishes and breaking the rules undetected. Though I doubt this was meant to incite people to subversive revolt, it does describe a way to usurp society by burying oneself within it and than running away. This is additionally revolutionary as it portrays sex positively without portraying its willing participants negatively, particularly Madeline.
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