Elsewhere, the dramatist seems to betray private suspicion of the
normal woman's volitional capacity by applying to her heart and mind
the specific epithet "waxen." The feminine temperament takes the
impress of its environment as easily as wax takes the impress of a
seal. In two passages where this simile is employed,[31] the deduction
from it is pressed to the furthest limit, and free-will is denied
women altogether. Feminine susceptibility is pronounced to be
incurable; wavering, impressionable emotion is a main constituent of
woman's being; women are not responsible for the sins they commit nor
the wrongs they endure.
[Footnote 31:
For men have marble, _women waxen minds_,
And therefore are they formed as marble will;
The weak oppressed, the impression of strange kinds
Is form'd in them by force, by fraud, or skill.
Then call them not the authors of their ill,
No more than wax shall be accounted evil,
Wherein is stamp'd the semblance of a devil.
(_Lucrece_, 1240-6.)
How easy it is for the proper-false
In _women's waxen hearts_, to set their forms!
Alas! our frailty is the cause, not we;
For, such as we are made of, such we be.
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