Mansfield's aim in "Prelude" and "At the Bay" was to recreate the life she knew as a child in New Zealand.

Each story consists of a series of episodes presented sequentially. Characters are not so much introduced or described as discovered within scenes; the reader learns about them and their lives from direct observation. T. O. Beachcroft points out that in this method there is no narrator. Mansfield allows "no comment from any implied narrator"; she makes "the scene and the events of the story reveal themselves." Another critic calls the form "dramatic in character, revealed rather than told." The cumulative effect of these short episodes is greater than the sum, for at the end of each story, the reader feels that he knows these people and their lives intimately, even though he is ignorant of most details of time, place, and class which would conventionally be used...