I'm reading Death Before Wicket, and within the first 25 pages or so Phryne claims that she is an anarchist and doesn't care who knows it. I'm also watching season one on dvd and loving the series. Phryne is very advance in her thinking considering . . . . .but I guess the 1920s were kinda wild in some ways.
Anarchist ... limited only in the political sense and as it relates to women issues. In her heart, she is a hedonist. And back then, society used its politics to prevent or punish women who sought pleasure for its own sake. In some segments of our societies today, that still exists.
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Est modus in rebus sunt certi denique fines quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum Goldilocks
Maybe she is, maybe she isn't. She also has the type of personality that sometimes she says things just to shock people.
But she is a flapper. Flappers bobbed their hair, didn't wear corsets or such, flattened their breasts, danced the Charleston, and did all sorts of things the older generation thought of as shocking.
Of course Ms. Fisher is a little past the age of being a flapper. Flappers were usually, I think, early 20s or thereabouts. Still in a rebellious age.
If you've seen the movie Chicago, she's a lot like the dark bobbed hair one in the movie (Velma, played by Catherine Zeta Jones). Booze, jazz, garters, bobbed hair, wild ways, some women not planning on getting married (marriage was very restrictive for women back then), etc. You gotta admit that's a lot more interesting than the texting, self-involved millenials nowadays.