Though Eve does not directly address her daughters until the eighth stanza, this poem is a clear warning to women about the dangers of scientific advancement and of being the "submissive" gender that allows man to run amok according to his whims.

Eve begins the poem by claiming, "It was not I who began it," clearly placing the responsibility for the world's ills on Adam's shoulders. She explains that Adam "kept on brooding over the insult" of being cast out of Eden, and because "outside Eden the earth was imperfect," Adam casts himself as a God figure who can make the earth "a new Eden." This egotism and vanity allows for incredible advances in science and technology, thus improving man's quality of life, such as central heating, domesticated animals, mechanical harvesters, combustion engines, and modern means of communication.

However, this progress comes at a cost. Because Adam thinks that science "was the whole secret" to creating the world, he believes wholeheartedly that everything is measurable, definable, and seeable. But when it comes to God, "[He] cannot be demonstrated, / And what cannot be demonstrated / doesn't exist." Adam has created for himself a world that defies his truth: that God is real.

Thus, Eve is left to ponder what Adam's work has allowed her to see about his flaws, her own flaws, and the changes Adam's discoveries have enacted on the world. She worries about mechanization's effect on the climate, which she calls "this fall-out." She admits that she has been too passive in watching Adam continue on his maniacal quest to become godlike and wonders if "this whole elaborate fable" is meant to show humanity that it is flawed and fallible. However, Adam cannot accept this message, for he has "turned himself into God, / who is faultless, and doesn't exist."

The poem, then, ultimately questions the tension between scientific advancement and faith, the effect of industrialization on the world's climate, and the gendered roles that men and women inhabit.