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Behind a Mask, Or, a Woman's Power A.M. Barnard , Louisa May Alcott
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Behind a Mask, Or, a Woman's Power
A.M. Barnard , Louisa May Alcott
Behind a Mask, Or, a Woman's Power A.M. Barnard , Louisa May Alcott Originally published in 1866 under the pseudonym "A. M. Barnard." Louisa May Alcott's novel of romance and sexual intrigue is one of her lesser-known gems. Its tone and characterizations strike a markedly different chord from her best-known works, such as "Little Women" and "Little Men," and it remains a popular addition to her oeuvre.
Behind a Mask, Or, a Woman's Power Details
Date : Published September 10th 2005 by Wildside Press (first published 1866) ISBN : 9781557423665 Author : A.M. Barnard , Louisa May Alcott Format : Hardcover 117 pages Genre : Classics, Fiction, Historical, Historical Fiction, Literature, 19th Century
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From Reader Review Behind a Mask, Or, a Woman's Power for online ebook
Jeremiah says
Simply delicious. A cup of tea that slightly burns your tongue.
Barbara says
OK, so, by and large I did not like this. It's not that it's not a good story. The fact that the protagonist enraged me so indicates that it really is. But...the rating is based on whether I liked it....
The ONLY thing that got it two stars from me was:
"Yes; but oh, remember that I have no friend but you! Promise me to be faithful to the last--to believe in me, to trust me, protect and love me, in spite of all misfortunes, faults, and follies. I will be true as steel to you, and make your life as happy as it deserves to be. Let us promise these things now, and keep the promises unbroken to the end."
Her solemn air touched xxxxxxxxxx [to avoid spoiling]. Too honorable and upright himself to suspect falsehood in others, he saw only the natural impulse of a lovely girl in Jean's words, and, taking the hand she gave him in both of his, he promised all she asked, and kept that promise to the end. She paused an instant, with a pale, absent expression, as if she searched herself, then looked up clearly in the confiding face above her, and promised what she faithfully performed in afteryears."
Sally906 says
BEHIND A MASK (aka ‘A Woman’s Power’) is a novelette by Louisa May Alcott and completely different from her ‘Little Women’ series. This is a story of secrets, betrayal, deception and sexual intrigue.
Jean Muir is a delicate and demure governess who, on recommendation of a family friend, has come to stay with the Coventry family and tutor the only daughter, Bella. Before the introductions are barely over she manages to gain the affections of Mrs. Coventry, her charge Bella, the youngest son Edward and Sir John, their rich uncle. But not everyone is captivated by her. Gerald, the elder brother and master of the family, and Lucia, his cousin and fiancé, distrust the woman and start to investigate her claims. Jean is a survivor; she has to stay one step ahead of everyone as her secrets are slowly revealed. What is she really up to? What is her objective? Will she succeed?
A fast-paced read, the tale twists and turns. BEHIND A MASK is multi-layered and packed full of last- minute escapes and trickery. Whether Jean succeeds or fails remains in doubt until the very last page.
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Jazzy says
Indeed... a queer little book. But very intriguing all the same with the mystery, wrought with humor, romance, and dark secrets yet unraveled. :)
Rebecca says
I would surely like to know the public reaction when this book was published. It is somewhat unusual more so for an author like L M Alcott who authored the Little women which those who have read it know to be prim and proper ,maybe a little preachy too. This one was just the opposite and it brought so much excitement and suspense that I started anxiously waiting for my morning walks when I could listen to this on audio from Librivox. Hats off to the author for such a variety in her writing. And a word of appreciation for the reader Elizabeth Klett. Her voice with only slight nuances brings the various characters to life.
Caroline Bennett says
[Gerald says he loves Jean "in spite of himself" and calls her a witch for fascinating him. The first chapter is a br
Angele says
One of Alcott's "forgotten" but now celebrated Victorian thrillers, first published under the pseudonym A.M. Bernard. This tale (to which I listened on www.librivox.org) does not disappoint. Jean Muir comes into the wealthy Coventry family disguised as a demure 19-year-old governess; in reality, she is a human time bomb. But for all her manipulations and outright lies, for all the passion and violence that lie beneath her calm and competent surface, Jean--a skilled actress waging a battle against age and poverty--is more sympathetic than the Coventrys, who display as a group all of the seven deadly sins. The narrative twists and turns that lead to Jean's muffled triumph not only kept this listener rapt, but spurred--as they have in contemporary critics-- important reflections on class, gender, and the scope of female agency.
Emilee says
Well written, no matter how much I don’t like any of the characters. I was held in suspense until the end. It felt like something Alcott thought up as a romantic teen.
Amanda says
I LOVED THIS STORY. Read for my American fem lit class, I enjoyed reading this story just as much as discussing it. Alcott tells of Jean and the family with such skill and the plot twist is just so interesting that I tore through it.
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J. Boo says
"Little Women" has a lot of autobiographical elements, among them Jo's making a living by writing schlocky thrillers. "Behind a Mask" was one of Alcott's, but in this case I'm going to say she undersold her works considerably - it's really a hoot. The Femme Fatale/Adventuress is, I think, out of fashion these days -- not that I really keep in touch but "Gone Girl" seems to be the only recent popular entre featuring one. Too bad.
Here, the delightfully devious Jean Muir starts governessing for a well-off family, and begins to target the available men. Her mouth wouldn't melt butter as she plays one off the other.
It's not without its flaws -- an editor could have trimmed a bit here and there to make for a more compelling plotline and (view spoiler)
3.4/5. Fun times. Glad I didn't give up after taking a trip to Dullsville with "The Mysterious Key", which was also written during this period in Alcott's life.
Freely available from Gutenberg.org
Bellezza says
Quite different from the Little Woman series of books and 8 cousins and the books that we part of that series.
This book is about a woman looking for security in a society that discriminates against them. When a woman with no family had limited options and was held to a much higher standard of conduct then others. Miss Alcott writes with much attention to detail that is not overbearing or too wordy, and with a keen understanding of what it is like to be powerless in one sense and use one's strengths to ones advantage.
Γι?ννης says
Σατανικ? και δολοπλ?κα γκουβερν?ντα αποπλανε? οικογ?νεια αθ?ων πλην ?µως µαµο?χαλων αριστοκρατ?ν στην βικτωριαν? Αγγλ?α...
Sally Whitehead says
I first read this fantastic little novella for my Literature degree back in the mid nineties and I remember being incredibly surprised by the "Alternative Alcott" (for that is the name of the anthology my copy appears in) I was presented with having only ever really associated her with "Little Women" previously.
This is an utterly delicious story and so deftly and delightfully woven it literally made me grin to reread it. This is Alcott having fun, and it's wicked and theatrical and I still love it!
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K. says
Chosen for a 2018's POPSUGAR's reading challenge: "a book written by a woman using a male pseudonym". Barnard is, of course, Louisa May Alcott. If I remember correctly, it is this sort of fiction that she had always wanted to be writing. "The "moral pap for the young" style of Little Women and its sequels was something she was good at, but didn't particularly care one way or another for it. Alcott was steered to write didactic children's fiction with the assurance that if she did, her aspiring author father would also receive a publishing contract.
Regardless, if you've read Little Women, this its amoral, cynical cousin. There's a family involved and that's where the similarities end. I have a big ol' literature boner for morally grey, manipulative characters - it's a flaw of mine that I have come to accept. Miss Jean Muir is a Top Bitch and really could work as a high level spy - she's got the acting, the disguise, the ability to achieve emotional rapport with an audience very, very well.
"Are you one of those fair deceivers?"
"You are complimentary," laughed the girl. "I am a witch, and one day my disguise will drop away and you will see me as I am: old, ugly, bad and lost. Beware of me in time. I've warned you. Now love me at your peril."
Lobstergirl says
Sneaky governess, idiot aristocrats.
Lizixer says
A delicious little thriller set in Victorian Britain - a good autumnal short read of dark secrets, sexual intrigue and good old fashioned melodrama.
Pomme de Terre says
There is a trope I see fairly often in romantic stories/subplots where the heroine, thinking she’s alone or being unwatched, does something private or personal like singing, crying, marvelling at some personal token, etc., but is actually being secretly watched by the hero. The heroine’s guard is let down, allowing the reader, and most importantly, the hero to gaze at her during a moment of vulnerability. The power dynamics are such that the hero knows more about the heroine’s personal life than vice-versa, and thus has the upper hand in their relationship. Yet the appeal of this trope, in my opinion, is that this vulnerability, this getting to know another person on a deeply intimate level, is what causes the hero to fall in love with the heroine, which in turn gives power to her over him.
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But what is crucial is the fact that the heroine is never allowed to know she is the object of the hero’s gaze. Because that knowingness, that knowledge, would ruin her modest, wholesome image and give her power over the hero, and ultimately, power in women is still unattractive, uncomfortable and threatening. And I really, really dislike it when I read a book and see tropes like these unthinkingly reproduced because it essentially amounts to the author unwittingly saying that this is normal, that this is an unremarkable event in the grand scheme of the narrative. And that, is how sexism is normalised in our society.
Yes, there are probably better-written, more insightful and complex books out there on gender, and yes, this book is an openly gothic, melodramatic thriller which uses tropes that have appeared numerous times in other (most likely better) novels, BUT a) I like gothic, melodramatic thrillers with secrets and seductions and scandals, and b) I read this at a time when I was bottling up a fair bit of frustration about romanticised feminine modesty in fiction, so seeing it all be so thoroughly examined and skewered was quite cathartic. This was written over a century ago, but it still felt alarmingly relevant to the gender dynamics of modern pop culture.
Look, in real life, opening yourself up to your partner is a slow, difficult process that is full of uncertainty, discomfort and fear, which goes against the idea of feminine modesty, restraint and docility. In a lot of fiction, women mustn't talk about themselves and their desires and urges, and so this aspect of relationship development takes place through moments like what I’ve described above - moments of accidentally, unwitting vulnerability. Gustave Flaubert gets at this in Madame Bovary when he talks about Emma’s reluctance to pursue her attraction to Léon:
“She would have like Léon to guess at it; and she imagined various coincidences and catastrophes that might have hastened discovery. Doubtless it was inertia or terror that held her back, and modesty as well. She fancied that she had pushed him too far away, that the moment was gone, that all was lost. But the pride, the joy of saying to herself ‘I am virtuous’, and of looking herself in the mirror striking poses of resignation, consoled her somewhat of the sacrifices she believed she was making.”
And I love that this idealisation of female reticence is portrayed as so artificial and false, as a kind of "fuck you" to all the novels that mindlessly regurgitate those views. You get the impression that Alcott had several particular romance novels in mind when pillorying the sexist ideas that underpin them and ugh, it was all so satisfying.
Aside from this, the book is short and pretty entertaining re: gothic melodrama. The plot is basically that a mysterious governess shows up seeking work at the house of a family, who readily accept her although Alcott signals pretty early on that there’s something a little strange, a little not quite right about her, and how strange it is that the family have begun acting increasingly dysfunctional since her arrival . . .
I will say this, though: I don’t think the book allows the experience of “sitting back and gleefully watching the central character slowly and carefully manipulate the lives of those around them like puppets” to take place so cleanly for the reader. Alcott is very good at making you feel sympathetic towards the family in the the story, so much so that it makes the revelation of (view spoiler) true nature all the more unpleasant, as well as unfortunately somewhat go against the critique of gendered expectations the book was trying to convey.
I’m still a little conflicted by this - we don’t actually get a terribly deep look into (view spoiler)’s backstory, so the story's morality remains fairly uncomplicated in keeping her as its despicably cruel villain. But at the same time, there were moments where I felt that Alcott let some admiration towards her leak through, almost as though she took a secret glee in her success.
I shall now close with the quote that probably stuck out the most to everyone who read this book:
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“As I sat there trying to pluck up my spirits, I thought of the days when I was lovely and young, good and gay. My glass showed me an old woman of thirty, for my false locks were off, my paint gone, and my face was without its mask. Bah! how I hate sentiment! I drank your health from your own little flask, and went to bed to dream that I was playing Lady Tartuffe—as I am.”
Ana Rînceanu says
A quick and rewarding novella, which stands in contrast with the famous Little Women. The heroine Jean Muir is saucy, witty and tough. A woman after my own heart, with a clear goal in mind whose execution was as masterful as it was devious. If you liked Austen's Lady Susan, you'll love this.
Tammy says
Most people will either love Alcott for her "Little Women" and "Little Men" or hate her for it. If you have fallen into the hate camp, as I have, because "Little Women" is too sweet, you will love this side of Alcott. She is saucy, witty, and tough. Alcott's governess makes Jane Eyre look as though she has dropped out of a Jane Austen novel, and as all students of literature have learned, Bronte hated Austen for her unrealistic view of life.
Alcott beautifully delivers a sick and twisted tale of a woman and her arts. She put a completely new spin on Victorian literature, which could only be accomplished in American. You won't like the heroine, but Alcott did not mean for you to like her. Therefore, she brilliantly achieves success in delivering a dark and creepy novel.
Julian Gyll-Murray says
Having not grown up with Little Women, I do not have the same fondness for Alcott which millions of others seem to have. With this text (one of her "blood and thunder" genre novels) however, I'm fully on board. This story is wicked and moral; fast-paced but layered. The main character is an immediate favourite; a ruthless and conniving woman who goes about the novel ridiculing and subverting Victorian notions of class and gender.
The fact that Alcott had to hide behind a mask of a male pseudonym just makes its message all the more potent. Highly recommended.
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