This is a very short novella by Louisa May Alcott, although it was published under the penname, A.M. Barnard. I wasn’t going to read it, but Bonnets at Dawn discussed it on their podcast and urged listeners to read it before finishing the episode, so I did as I was told.
It really is very short and took me only a few hours to read, so if you’re at all interested in reading it (and I recommend you do) and you hate spoilers, I likewise recommend you stop reading this review until you’ve read the book. You can probably get it for free from your local library and/or Amazon, and if you can’t, it’s available on Project Gutenberg.
It’s about a governess, which made it a great follow-up to Agnes Grey, but it is very different from Agnes Grey. It’s also very different from Little Women, which I’m sure is why it was published under a different name. If Little Women is too sweet for you, I recommend Behind a Mask because it is anything but sweet!
Behind a Mask starts with the Coventry family lying around the parlor complaining about the new governess they’re expecting to arrive any minute. Gerald, the oldest son of the family, was supposed to send a carriage to pick her up from the train station, but he’s too lazy to do that much, so he doesn’t bother, and yet the woman still manages to arrive on time.
Despite the fact that they were all trashtalking her until the moment she walked in the door, she quickly manages to win them over by being sweet and servile – making tea, playing the piano and singing for them.
A couple people continue to trashtalk her while she’s in the room with them. She hears them and lets them know she can hear them, while also letting them know she doesn’t care what they say about her.
By the time they all retire for the evening, almost everyone is willing to at least give her a chance. In her bedroom, she wipes off her makeup, lets down her hair, and removes some false teeth and is apparently transformed from a woman of nineteen (which is the age she gave her new employers) to a woman of “at least thirty”. If LMA thought 30 was ancient, I can only imagine what she would think of me as a 33-year-old spinster.
The next morning Jean Muir (the governess) goes about winning everyone over. She arranges things so that she runs into Sir John, a man in his mid-fifties who owns the estate, flatters him without seeming to do so intentionally, wins over Edward/Ned, the younger son, by showing her ability to tame a horse, and wins over the cousin, Lucia (who is not engaged to Gerald, but it’s “understood” that they’ll marry) by complementing a portrait of Lucia’s dead mother.
From then on it’s pretty smooth sailing. She plays music and sings and tells hilarious stories and absolutely everyone loves her, including the servants. LMA specifically points out that, while most governesses are lonely because they inhabit a space between the family and the servants, Jean is never lonely because everyone always wants to be where she is, which is in direct contrast to poor Agnes’s condition.
She avoids Gerald like the plague, which is, of course, the best way to gain his attention and respect. She is a master of human psychology and seems to know just what to say and do, and what not to say and do, to win everyone over.
From the beginning of the second chapter, when it’s clear Jean has her sights set on Sir John, I figured she was out to marry him, but she put so much time and effort into wooing Gerald (or rather, getting him to woo her), that I thought she might be after him. He is, after all, set to inherit the estate, and so it might make more sense, as a long-term strategy, for her to make him her target, rather than Sir John.
But it turns out that Sir John is, in fact, her target. Although 30 is ancient for a woman, mid-fifties is not that old for a man in the Victorian era and Jean says she can’t afford to wait around for him to die before becoming mistress of the estate. Besides, if she manages to give him a son (difficult for a woman in her 30s at that time, but not unheard of), then he’ll inherit the estate and she’ll have a large, comfortable home and financial security for the rest of her life!
Despite the fact that it’s such a short novella, SO MUCH happens! There’s a stabbing and a train crash and a few instances of mistaken identities. Stolen letters and a deadline for Jean to either achieve her goal or get kicked out of the house and I could not wait to find out what happened next!