White colonialism and sexual modernity: Australian women in the early twentieth century metropolis

Abstract

In early September 1933 Dorothy Wright, originally from Sydney, committed suicide by shooting herself in Paris in ‘the sumptuous flat of Roland Coty, son of the perfume magnate’. According to ‘An Intimate Friend’ who narrated Wright’s story for the Australian press, her death was ‘the inevitable end’ of her attempt ‘to conquer a world of glamour and luxury’. Wright had apparently become famous for her cross-Channel social and sexual success, a popularity which had begun when she appeared in the chorus of a revue at His Majesty’s Theatre in London soon after her arrival from Australia. But the ‘greatest of her triumphs’ had occurred in 1931 during an Indian Round Table Conference held in London, when she had become ‘a friend of half the Indian princes who were in Town’.1.