The ‘New Woman’
Modern living, interiors and feminine identity in interwar New South Wales
This paper was written by Jhidyn Rossall in 2026 as a recipient of the Dr Zeny Edwards OAM Student Research Fellowship at Museums of History NSW.
During the interwar period in NSW, the figure of the ‘New Woman’ emerged as a powerful symbol of femininity and modern life. She was independent, educated, fashionable and increasingly visible in the public eye.
While often associated with the glamour of the 1920s ‘flapper’, the New Woman was more than a mere fashion trend. Contemporary Australian newspapers such as The Sydney Morning Herald celebrated the flapper – and, by extension, the New Woman – as the modern ideal of femininity, describing her as a ‘more perfect girl than ever before’.1
The phrase ‘New Woman’ did not originate in Australia. It was first popularised in the late 19th century by British writer Sarah Grand, whose essay ‘The new aspect of the Woman Question’ condemned women’s long history of submission to patriarchal norms as an ‘eternal shame’.2 The New Woman represented self-expression and a rejection of society’s rigid gender expectations and embraced the trends towards modernity that followed the end of World War I.
In Australia, this transformation took place not only in the arenas of politics, employment and fashion but also within the domestic interior and applied arts. Colour, furniture, fabric and design became tools that were used to shape the way modern femininity was expressed and legitimised.
Domesticity itself was redefined as a creative outlet, offering women new ways of expressing authority and cultural agency. Through publications such as The Home magazine, the New Woman gained cultural visibility, challenging longstanding patriarchal assumptions about women’s place. In Sydney, and NSW more broadly, four women led this transformation – Thea Proctor, Margaret Preston, Margaret Jaye and Molly Grey.
The Home magazine
The Caroline Simpson Library holds a full series of The Home magazine from the interwar period. Founded in Sydney during the 1920s, The Home became one of Australia’s most influential arbiters of taste and design, functioning as both a cultural authority and a commercial platform.
Luxuriously produced and beautifully illustrated, it was aimed at the educated urban reader who was interested in art, architecture, fashion and interior decoration. More than a lifestyle magazine, The Home instructed its readers on how modernity should look and feel in an Australian context. The New Woman was presented as a discerning participant in modern domestic culture. Readers were encouraged to abandon the cluttered, heavily ornamented interiors of the Victorian era in favour of simplicity, balance and restraint. Cultural sophistication was framed not by how much one owned but by a woman’s ability to choose and arrange her surroundings with taste and judgement. Something revolutionary was taking shape in Australia – taste and individualism became the key markers of femininity.
The magazine translated artistic principles into a practical, albeit costly, guide for the home, selling the idea that modern taste could be learned and applied to the domestic space. The Home also played a part in blurring the boundaries between written editorials and commercial marketing. In a not-so-subtle way, articles on modern design appeared alongside adverts for decorators, furniture, textiles and household goods.
While access to modern interiors remained limited to the urban middle class, who could afford the newest furnishings and professional advice, The Home gave women a chance to define the cultural identity of Sydney.
Thea Proctor: rejecting Victorian domesticity
Among the most influential contributors to The Home was artist Alethea Mary Proctor, known as Thea Proctor. She featured regularly in the magazine throughout the 1920s and 30s, playing a foundational role in shaping the visual language of modern femininity in Sydney.
The Caroline Simpson Library’s holdings of The Home document how Proctor’s designs were reproduced through print culture during the interwar period. Her work embraced clean lines, uncluttered spaces and bright colours. Proctor’s cover designs for The Home gave visual form to the New Woman, depicting her as elegant, poised and self-possessed, the embodiment of women’s new sense of independence and confidence.
In exchange for the public platform, Proctor gave the magazine a sense of class and authority that allowed it to influence the cultural impact of art and design. She became widely known for her ‘Thea-Proctorish’ flower arrangement and expertise in art.3 A telling article published by the Sydney Mail applauded Proctor for being a woman committed to a ‘worthwhile job’ in a society that otherwise offered women limited opportunity.4 Scholars since have continued to praise Proctor, describing her as an ‘imagemaker’ who became a ‘byword for taste, stylishness and … cultural trends’.5
Although she was not an interior decorator by trade, Proctor had a profound influence on the field. She deplored the fact that Australians had failed to take up interior decoration as a ‘trained profession’, and encouraged young women to pursue it as a means of expressing modern femininity and gaining financial autonomy.6
House decoration is an art and it is a never ending source of pleasure to those who study it …
Crucially, Proctor was a firm believer in modernity, publicly rejecting the heavy ornamentation and moral symbolism that were associated with the old Victorian interiors. In articles such as ‘Household weeds’, she actively criticised the excess of the Victorian room, instead advocating for simplicity and thoughtful arrangement.7 In a 1922 interview, she insisted that ‘no woman need be a slave to fashion’, arguing that individuality and judgement were central to good taste.8
At the time, the modernist aesthetic promoted by designers such as Proctor was considered to be ‘dangerous’ because it challenged the rigidity of Australian traditions.9 However, Proctor’s popularity no doubt reflected changing cultural attitudes in Sydney towards femininity.
Through her art, Proctor placed the New Woman centre stage, challenged conservative expectations, and aligned domestic design with autonomy and self-expression.
Margaret Preston: colour, form and modern taste
It would be difficult to overstate the significance of Margaret Preston’s impact on shaping Sydney’s modern woman. Like Proctor, she was widely regarded as one of Australia’s foremost artists, exciting other women and encouraging them to adopt modernity.10
Her work was often featured in newspapers and was known for its beautiful use of colour.11 In paintings such as Flapper (1925), Preston depicted women as being autonomous and self-aware, often shown alone and absorbed within their own thoughts. It was the perfect visual imagery to represent the New Woman as she was – strong from her independence and beauty.
Preston played a key role in popularising woodcuts and linocuts in Australia, helping to establish these mediums as serious modern art forms. In doing so, she carved out greater visibility for women artists within an art world that remained largely male-dominated. Her woodcuts of the 1920s, such as Nude 2, used bold composition and simplified forms to express control, clarity and modern sensibility. It was through this ‘brilliant command of composition’ that Preston was able to visualise femininity as rational, controlled and self-directed rather than just decorative.12
Preston’s influence extended well beyond the gallery. She was a frequent contributor to The Home, using its platform to publicly reject the aesthetics of the Victorian interior, which she described as ‘dull’ and ‘restrictive’.13
By applying her modernist principles to interior decoration, fabric design and even flower arrangement, Preston helped legitimise domestic design as a serious cultural pursuit.14 She reframed the home as a site where art and everyday life intersected, placing the New Woman in the role of an educated tastemaker rather than a passive consumer.
Margaret Jaye and Molly Grey: professionalising modern domestic taste
While Proctor and Preston were instrumental in laying the aesthetic and intellectual foundations for modern domestic taste, interior decorators Margaret Jaye and Molly Grey translated those ideals into a lived reality. Both women operated professionally within Sydney during the interwar period, capitalising on the increasing demand for interior decoration.
In the last five years almost a revolution has taken place in furniture and furnishing design … The simplicity, restfulness and dignity of the modern furniture is … increasingly appreciated everywhere … a really successful modern room is a thing of beauty.
Working with The Home, Jaye and Grey offered practical services that allowed modern design to be purchased and experienced. Advertisements for their businesses and images of their work in interwar issues of The Home appeared alongside editorial discussions of taste. This normalised the idea that a woman could be a professional ‘interior decorator’ and reinforced the magazine’s message that modernity could be obtained through expert guidance and informed consumption.
Jaye and Grey engaged directly with their clients’ homes, setting them apart from other artists whose work was primarily visual or theoretical. Through furnishings, colour schemes and spatial planning, they transformed domestic interiors into spaces shaped by professional expertise and modern sensibility. In doing so, they embodied the New Woman, not as an abstract idea but as an active participant in consumer culture and professional life.
Australian women do not sufficiently consider the importance of interior decoration, but with their flair for clothes and eye for color and design, there is no reason why they should not apply to house decoration their good taste in dress.
Writing for the magazine Decoration and Glass, Jaye lists her ‘golden rules’ of modern furnishing, prioritising minimalism, careful choice of colour and form, and a careful selection of objets d’art.15 Firmly advocating for the importance of fabric choice and rich colour schemes, she believed herself lucky to be living in an age that she defined as reflecting the ‘modern design for living’.16 One can’t help but note the resemblance of Margaret Jaye’s golden rules to the philosophical blueprint established by Proctor and Preston in the 1920s.
Some of Sydney’s loveliest homes, and some of the most modern shops and offices, have been decorated by Miss Jaye.
Similarly, Molly Grey achieved commercial success through her furniture and interior design work. She was often commissioned by firms such as Ricketts and Thorp to create complete interior schemes and showroom displays that showcased their products. Although this was a commercial partnership, it provided Grey with financial independence and professional authority within a field still largely dominated by men. In her writings, she advocated for ‘restful interiors’ characterised by ‘charm and dignity’, favouring simple, harmonious designs over excessive ornamentation.17
Significantly, interior decoration was one of the few socially acceptable pathways through which women could exercise creative authority while remaining connected to the domestic sphere. Jaye and Grey were able to navigate this tension by redefining domesticity itself. Rather than reinforcing the home as a site of unpaid labour, they positioned it as a space of aesthetic judgement, cultural value and paid expertise.
Together, the work of Thea Proctor, Margaret Preston, Margaret Jaye and Molly Grey reveals how modern femininity was actively embraced in interwar NSW. Through art, print culture and domestic interiors, these women reshaped the home into a site of individual expression and professional possibilities. Preserved today through magazines, advertisements and reference material held in the Caroline Simpson Library, their work offers a material record of how modern womanhood was visualised, circulated and practised in Sydney’s everyday life.
Notes
- ‘The flapper’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 August 1926, p11.
- Sarah Grand, ‘The new aspect of the Woman Question’, The North American Review, vol 158, no 448, 1894, p272.
- ‘Letters to Mariegold’, Sunday Times, 28 November 1926, p14.
- PC, ‘Women who are doing worth-while jobs, no VIII: Miss Thea Proctor’, Sydney Mail, 20 November 1929, pp35–6.
- Carol A Morrow, ‘Women and modernity in interior design: a legacy of design in Sydney, Australia from the 1920s to the 1960s’, PhD dissertation, University of New South Wales, 2005, pp155–6; Pamela G Nunn, ‘Owning femininity: Thea Proctor and the Australian avant-garde’, in Bridget Elliot and Janice Helland (eds), Women artists and the decorative arts 1880–1935: The gender of ornament, Routledge, London, 2002, p73.
- PC, ‘Women who are doing worth-while jobs’, p35.
- Thea Proctor, ‘Household weeds’, The Home: An Australian Quarterly, vol 4, no 1, 1 March 1923, p14.
- J G Lister, ‘Australians must develop taste says Miss Thea Proctor’, The Home: An Australian Quarterly, 1 June 1922, p37.
- Morrow, ‘Women and modernity in interior design’, p137.
- ‘Praise for an Australian artist’, The Home: An Australian Quarterly, vol 10, no 5, 1 May 1929, p88; Beatrice Tildesley, ‘Margaret Preston’s work excites other artists’, Sydney Mail, 7 August 1929, p13.
- ‘For the National Art Gallery: Australian Gum Blossoms. Oil Painting by Margaret Preston’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 June 1928, p18.
- Roger Butler, Sydney by design: wood and linoblock prints by Sydney women artists between the wars, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 1995, pp44–5.
- Margaret Preston, ‘Why I became a convert to modern art’, The Home: An Australian Quarterly, vol 4, no 2, 1 June 1923, p20.
- Elizabeth Butel, Margaret Preston, Ett Imprint, Sydney, 2015, p10.
- Margaret Jaye, ‘The stimulating lure of modern fabrics’, Decoration and Glass, vol 1, no 4, 1 August 1935, p22.
- Margaret Jaye, ‘The increasing interest of modern fabrics’, Decoration and Glass, vol 1, no 3, 1 July 1935, p12.
- Molly Grey, ‘The essentials in furnishing’, The Home: An Australian Quarterly, vol 15, no 6, 1 June 1934, p50.
About Jhidyn Rossall
Jhidyn Rossall is a historian based in NSW, with a particular interest in modern Australian cultural history. He recently completed a Bachelor of Arts (History and Archaeology/Ancient History) at the University of Wollongong and was a 2025–26 Dr Zeny Edwards OAM Student Research Fellow with Museums of History NSW. His research interests include colonial archives, Indigenous–settler relations, and memory in Australian history. During his fellowship, he explored how print culture and domestic design reflected changing ideas of femininity and modern identity in interwar NSW.
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2025 student research fellowship projects
For the inaugural round of the fellowship, applicants were asked to propose a project that responded to the theme of the role of women in architecture and/or applied arts/design during the 20th century in NSW
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