Mansfield’s stories revolve around an impulse of rebellion against the false and sterile refinements of British culture (consider Laura’s reactions in The Garden Party to various features of her mother’s party as she awakens to the reality of the impoverished lifestyle of their neighbors).  Mansfield’s stories often depicted young women on the brink of adulthood constrained by narrow social conventions and struggling to find an appropriate response to the restrictions imposed on them.  Mansfield’s stories also gave a realistic portrayal of the conflict between European refinement and raw colonial life, a conflict she experienced in her life in New Zealand and which she never fully resolved in her fiction.