Katherine Mansfield wrote all of her work between the years 1911 and 1925. This was a transitional period for women, where women began to fight for their right to live as equals to men, who up until then had dominated society. In 1915 she started writing what she hoped to be a novel, entitled `The Aloe', which was published in 1918 as a short story with the title `Prelude'.

    In Prelude Katherine Mansfield focuses on the women and the girls, and their struggles to come to terms with their identities. Each of the sections in Prelude tells of a small part of the Burnells' life. The children in Prelude are all exaggerated versions of the adults, except Kezia. Kezia experiences dominance of men early on in the story: she is left behind at the old house with her sister Lottie, a pathetic and timid little girl, and is invited...