Eve's Nature, Eve's Nurture in Dryden's Edenie Opera

Although Eve of John Dryden's The State of Innocence embodies many egregious womanly flaws of misogynist rhetoric, recalcitrant elements of the opera suggest a profound degree of uncertainty about the degree of Eve's culpability for the Fall. Eve's pride leads to mankind's destruction, but the opera creates a structural parallel between Adam and Lucifer, intimating that Eve's disobedience is partially learned. Not all husbands are alike: if Adam is an appropriate ruler over Eve. Lucifer, that other Adam in paradise, is not. Transgressive female behavior may therefore originate in illegitimate domestic rulership, masculine deceit, and intellectual neglect.