ingenue

A stock character in opera, theater, and literature. She is a girl or young woman who is endearingly wholesome and innocent. Very similar to the girl next door. She is generally portrayed as sweet, gentle, virtuous, beautiful, demure, with the wide-eyed innocence of a child and she is very often naive. She is often the victim of the libertine, whom she may have mistaken for the hero. Often she still lives with her parents, owing to her youth and naivete. She is usually the foil for the dangerously seductive femme fatale. She is often involved in a romantic subplot, usually with the boy next door and the romance is typically innocent and chaste. The ingenue is typically played by a lyric soprano in opera and musicals.