For Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, negotiating an acceptable presentation of femininity both on and off stage was a particularly important factor in maintaining what became an increasingly high-profile career in the inter-war period. Despite the more challenging roles examined in the previous chapter, the majority of stage roles played by Ffrangcon-Davies tended to conform to conventional assumptions of female behaviour, and she was careful to reinforce these connections in interviews about her life and career. The qualities by which the actress might be judged off the stage, as described in Noel Coward's popular inter-war song Mrs Worthington (1935), are that she be petite, slim and pretty: a decorative epitome of femininity. These expectations chime with assessments of Ffrangcon Davies in ‘at home’ interviews during the inter-war period, in which her petite frame and decorative professional reputation belied interviewers’ expectations about her ability to be a fully practical and domesticated woman. These themes of domesticity and decorative femininity were attributes which Ffrangcon-Davies cultivated in her off-stage public presentation throughout her career. As a woman who was both unmarried and working in the public sphere, Ffrangcon-Davies, like many others in her profession, found herself the subject of public fascination and scrutiny. During the inter-war period when public interest in her was especially high, conventional on- and off-stage presentations provided a convenient means of obscuring her lesbian sexuality.

Negotiating the pitfalls of public presentation both on and off stage, Ffrangcon-Davies was careful to maintain and reinforce connections with acceptable and normative female behaviour.