"The Daughters of the Late Colonel" is set in the early 20th century in a colony of the British Empire. Mansfield’s stories are often set in locations like this, but in this story the author doesn’t specify which country the action occurs in. Context clues like the presence of the Colonel's "Anglo-English" friends suggest it might be India. However, it could be anywhere, as the protagonists never leave their oppressive family house.
This era of British history was a restrictive and unyielding one for women, especially middle-aged unmarried ones with no power over their own finances. Jug and Con have been raised with strictly defined gender roles and a heavy emphasis on maintaining inherited family values. This setting, both cultural and physical, plays an important role in shaping the narrative. The sisters are confined in their house and confined by the expectations of femininity and submission. Hover over all of this is the presence of the Colonel, the patriarch of the family. His abuses and judgments dictate the structure of his daughters’ days.
This historical backdrop is central to understanding Jug and Con's bizarre situation. The British Empire was at its height of power from the late 19th to the early 20th century, and the rigid confines of British culture can be seen in every aspect of Jug and Con’s daily routine. The sisters live in a society in which colonial administrators and their families are expected to be paragons of British propriety, and they face intense pressure to conform to these ideals. For women like the Pinner sisters, this means a life separated from power and often totally confined to the domestic sphere. In this period, personal ambitions were regularly suppressed in favor of familial duty, and submission to the male head of household was an unavoidable necessity.
The physical setting of the story is the Pinner house, which after the Colonel’s death seems tomb-like and frozen in time. Its rooms and furnishings are a direct reflection of the era's conservative values. They are rich and sumptuous, but the women cannot enjoy them because they have been so beaten-down by their fathers’ expectations of submissiveness. The house feels like the den of a dangerous animal, whom Josephine feels could be around any corner poised "to spring" at them. The rooms are filled with Victorian furniture, stiff and unused. Although it has many comforts and luxuries, it is not a comfortable place to live.
The world outside the house is virtually non-existent in the sisters' lives. This reflects their complete isolation and entrapment. There are no mentions of them engaging with the local culture or society. This was a common result of the colonial mindset of the time, where British rulers kept themselves separate from the people they colonized. The Pinner house itself is a microcosm of Britain isolated in a different country. Its strict rules, lack of modern comforts, and its stiff compliance with period-specific customs are a commentary by Mansfield on the colonizers’ resistance to change and their sense of separation from their surroundings.
