I'm surprised noone has mentioned 'zoom' yet. It does not make your original example work directly, but almost. It may be very useful to keep in mind as a way to do whatever you want. http://hackage.haskell.org/package/lens-4.19.1/docs/Control-Lens-Zoom.html#v... The idea of zoom is that you use it like so: zoom my_lens my_monadic_action where my_monadic_action is a monadic action that works on the sub-element (call it 's') of the state, and the entire thing 'zoom my_lens my_monadic_action' is then a monadic action that works on the whole element (call it 't'). my_lens is a lens that focuses on 's' within 't'. So instead of using the lens all the time in the monadic action, you're basically saying: "Put this everywhere that you need to", and then you can do things with the sub-element 's'. Juan. PS: I hope I did not severely misunderstand what you wanted, but it's still a possibility. -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.