What is the story "The Doll's House" really about?

Katherine Mansfield's 1922 short story "The Doll's House" is about the daughters of the wealthy Burnell family receiving an elaborate doll's house which the girls show off to children at school. The Burnell girls' mother forbids them from inviting over the impoverished Kelvey sisters, whose mother is a washerwoman and whose father is rumored to be in prison. After every other girl from the Burnells' mixed-income school comes over to see the doll's house, Kezia, the youngest Burnell, secretly brings the Kelveys into the family's courtyard. While Kezia shows them the doll's house, Kezia's aunt angrily shoos away the Kelveys. In its depiction of the casual cruelty that results from extreme income inequality, "The Doll's House" illustrates the class prejudice of early twentieth-century New Zealand and the unreflecting way in which children lose their innocence and emulate their elders' propensity to shame and ostracize the underprivileged.