QUALITY STREET
A monologue from the
play by J.M. Barrie
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from Quality Street. J.M. Barrie. London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 1913. |
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PHOEBE: I am tired of being ladylike. I am a young
woman still, and to be ladylike is not enough. I wish to be bright
and thoughtless and merry. It is every woman's birthright to
be petted and admired; I wish to be petted and admired. Was I
born to be confined within these four walls? Are they the world,
Susan, or is there anything beyond them? I want to know. My eyes
are tired because for ten years they have seen nothing but maps
and desks. Ten years! Ten years ago I went to bed a young girl
and I woke up with this cap on my head. It is not fair. This
is not me, Susan, this is some other person, I want to be myself.
If you only knew how I have rebelled at times, you would turn
from me in horror. I have a picture of myself as I used to be;
I sometimes look at it. I sometimes kiss it, and asy, "Poor
girl, they have all forgotten you. But I remember." I keep
it locked away in my room. Would you like to see it? I shall
bring it down. My room! Oh, it is there that the Phoebe you think
so patient has the hardest fight with herself, for there I have
seemed to hear and see the Phoebe of whom this [looking at
herself] is but an image in a distorted glass. I have heard
her singing as if she thought she was still a girl. I have heard
her weeping; perhaps it was only I who was weeping; but she seemed
to cry to me, "Let me out of this prison, give me back the
years you have taken from me. Where is my youth? Oh, where are
my pretty curls?"
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