Interior can be counted among a number of images by McNicoll that present a more complicated understanding of domesticity and femininity. According to Victorian and Edwardian gender roles men and women occupied “separate spheres”: the private was associated with the feminine, and the public with the masculine. But for all the intimacy that the space in this painting evokes, we have no indication of the identity of the person who occupies it. There are no clues on the dresser or the mantle, and we cannot see the pictures on the wall.