From The Master of Mrs. Chilvers: An Improbable Comedy by Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome

Because children crowned her with honour. The barren woman was despised. All that is changing. This movement is adding impulse to it. (ST. HERBERT: Movements do not alter instincts.) But they do. Ever since man emerged from the jungle he has been shedding his instincts—shaping them to new desires. Where do you find this all-prevailing instinct towards maternity? Among the women of society, who sacrifice it without a moment’s hesitation to their vanity—to their mere pleasures? The middle-class woman—she, too, is demanding “freedom.” Children, servants, the home!—they are too much for her “nerves.” And now there comes this new development, appealing to the intellectual woman. Is there not danger of her preferring political ambition, the excitement of public life, to what has come to be regarded as the “drudgery” of turning four walls into a home, of peopling the silence with the voices of the children? (He crosses to the table—lays his hand again upon the open letter.) How do you know that this may not be her answer—“I have no children. I never mean to have children”? (SIGSBY enters in company with BEN LAMB, M.P. LAMB is a short, thick-set, good-tempered man.) Ah, Lamb, how are you?

Geoffrey Monologue from The Master of Mrs. Chilvers: An Improbable Comedy

Rehearse Geoffrey's monologue