Behind a Mask

Background

Behind a Mask was originally published in The Flag of Our Union in 1866. Later, in 1975, Madeleine B. Stern republished the story under Alcott's name with a collection of her other pieces. The republication of the work engendered new interest among literary critics; according to Christine Doyle Francis, it "stimulated the reconsideration of [Alcott's] career" in the period since.

This story belongs with many other thrillers and mysteries that Alcott published under the pseudonym A. M. Barnard. Of all her stories of femme fatales, Behind a Mask is considered Alcott's masterpiece in the genre of sensation fiction. Critic Christine Doyle Francis describes the novel as "ow[ing] most to Alcott's reading of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and William Thackery's Vanity Fair. In this light, Jean Muir becomes a subversion of the classic governess character in protest to the British class system and in praise of America as a "land of opportunity".

Plot

Set in the Coventry Mansion during the Victorian era, the wealthy family hires a young woman named Jean Muir to be the governess of sixteen-year-old Bella. When she first meets the Coventry family, Jean succeeds in charming Bella, Ned and Mrs. Coventry by having a fainting spell. However, Gerald and Lucia, son of the estate and cousin to the Coventry family, remain suspicious. They are skeptical with good reason, for when Jean retires to her own bedroom, she removes her costume (a wig and some fake teeth) to reveal that she is actually an actress of at least thirty years of age.

Acting the part of a harmless governess, Jean slowly but surely weasels her way into the hearts of the Coventry family. Eventually, all the male characters fall in love with her: first Ned, the youngest, followed by the skeptic Gerald, and gradually the unassuming uncle, John. She uses the love they bestow upon her to turn them against each other and eventually to secure the Coventry estate for herself. By the end of the story, Jean Muir has married John to become Lady Coventry.

Characters

Themes

One of the dominant themes in the novella is the positive treatment of actresses, acting, and theatre, much more positive than contemporary works. Doyle describes such positive treatments of acting as "highlighting Alcott's longtime interest in the theatre. She acted in community groups wrote plays for such groups and attended[...] many performances in Boston". Doyle describes this treatment similar to the treatment of acting in the short stories "V.V.: or Plots and Counterplots" (1865) and "A Double Tragedy: An Actor's Story" (1865), and the novels Work: A Story of Experience (1873) and Jo's Boys (1886). The most apparent permeation of theatre in Behind a Mask is the scene with the tableaux, in which Jean and Gerald hold lurid poses to entertain their audience.

Another theme present in the novella is that of social class. In her article titled "Domestic Conspiracy: Class Conflict and Performance in Louisa May Alcott's 'Behind a Mask,'" Elizabeth Schewe discusses the significance of the main character being a governess, a character who embodies class conflict in nineteenth-century literature. She points out that the governess (a lower-class individual) is teaching Bella, the young lady of the house (an upper-class individual.) In itself, this is a subversion of the social hierarchy.

The attainment of agency also claims thematic precedence in Behind a Mask. Sara Hackenberg suggests that Jean Muir actually adopts the authorship of her own life by assuming many roles: the governess, the teacher, the mesmerizer, the master plotter, and, finally, the surrogate fiction author. Using fiction (or deception) to manipulate "characters" (the Coventry family), Jean creates her own story in which she is both the antagonist and the protagonist.

Critical reception

Many literary critics have taken interest in the novella because its material was controversial for its time. One such literary critic is Christine Butterworth-McDermott, who sees this story as a transfiguring of the classic "Beauty and the Beast" story. She argues that Behind a Mask actually combines the characters, making Jean Muir both the "Beauty" and the "Beast". According to Butterworth-McDermott, the story is a criticism on the common literary trope of a woman spending her life healing a “Beast.” According to her argument, Alcott defies this literary trope by creating a character that is both beauty and beastly: Jean plays the role of a "Beauty" in order to hide her true nature as a "Beast".

The novel frequently receives feminist readings from literary critics. For example, Judith Fetterley, a well-known scholar on the works of Louisa May Alcott, argues that Alcott's motivation for writing the book was because she was stifled by the constraints society set on women during the nineteenth century. Fetterley sees a direct, perhaps even semi-autobiographical connection between Jean Muir and Alcott. According to her reading, Alcott wrote this story to subvert the fantasy of the perfect, "little woman". Cheri Louise Ross provides another feminist reading in her scholarly article in which she points out that Alcott created dangerous, independent, and intelligent female characters to subvert the patriarchal society in which they live.