St. Herbert. The answer, I should say, would be that the majority of women will continue to find something better to do. The women who will throw themselves into politics will be the unattached women, the childless women. (In an instant he sees his mistake, but it is too late.)
Geoffrey. (He rises, crosses to the desk, throws into a waste-paper-basket a piece of crumpled paper that was in his hand; then turns. The personal note has entered into the discussion.) The women who want to be childless—what about them?
St. Herbert. (He shrugs his shoulders.) Are there any such?
Geoffrey. There are women who talk openly of woman’s share in the general scheme being a “burden” on her—an “incubus.”
St. Herbert. A handful of cranks. To the normal woman motherhood has always been the one supreme desire.
Geoffrey. 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.
Geoffrey. 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?