Beautiful Deceptions: Victorian Gothic Antiheroines in ‘Behind A Mask’ and ‘Ravenscourt’

I wish I could say that I used Louisa May Alcott’s book Behind A Mask as inspiration for Ravenscourt but I only discovered this much overlooked book when I was putting together a presentation for a talk I was doing. I was situating Ravenscourt in the Gothic tradition and books such as Rebecca, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Woman in Black, came up. All of which I already knew but then up popped Behind A Mask. Like many of us, I had always associated Alcott with Little Women – I had been brought up on Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy and had seen various film adaptations (my favourite remains the classic 1949 version with a rather young Elizabeth Taylor as Amy). My sister and I vied to be Jo and I still believe I am better suited to her as after all I have written a book! So, Behind A Mask was quite a shock – for here was a female character who quite frankly has no relation to the little women of the March family!

Alcott was born in 1832 in Pennsylvania and wrote her first novel An Inheritance in 1849 (not published until after her death). She became a teacher but continued to publish short stories and poems in her local newspaper. Alcott published Behind A Mask or A Woman’s Power in 1866 (two years before Little Women) under the pseudonym of A.M.Barnard in ‘The Flag of Our Union’, a weekly Boston newspaper. Set in 19^th Century Britain, the novella follows Jean Muir, the deceitful governess of the wealthy Coventry family. A masterpiece of the genre of sensation fiction, Muir becomes a subversion of the classic governess character seemingly in protest to the British class system and in praise of America as a land of opportunity! Muir is seen to embody class conflict in 19^th Century literature.

Behind A Mask is all about hidden identity – Jean Muir is not the person she presents herself to be and this is obvious from the outset. In quite a powerfully manipulative way she actively shapes her own identity aiming to secure a fortune and gain status. Muir ‘wears a mask’ literally and metaphorically, hiding her real self, both in appearance (a wig, false teeth) and in social performance. In chapter one, when she retires for the night, she removes her false adornments and her ‘features settled into their natural expression, weary, hard, bitter.’ (9)

The book is very much reflective of 19^th century gender constraints and social hierarchies especially around women’s roles, class, and how women can gain agency. If we look at Britain at that time – women could not vote, divorce a cheating or abusive husband, could not own property and had limited job prospects (let’s not forget marital rape was not criminalised until 1991!), Women of Muir’s social class really only had teaching or becoming a governess available as a respectable job.

In Ravenscourt Arabella Pembrook also has to rely on her beauty to gain social status through marriage. She gains independence of a sort through her widowhood. Like Muir, she is a social climber and she too wears a mask. Both women use intellect and performance to attempt to subvert the patriarchal structure. Both are ambitious, manipulative, and lie about their backgrounds.

Both books deal with secrecy, hidden identities, and the idea that the past (or a hidden self) can be as powerful as present reality. Both women are disrupters of the social norm.  Jean Muir, taken in by the Coventry family, is seen as angelic, kind and beautiful. She has left her previous employment under a cloud – she plays the victim blaming the son of the house for trying to seduce her. Later it is revealed that it is in fact Muir who has attempted to snare the heir. By marrying the wealthy Sir John, uncle to the Coventry family, at the end of the book, she manages to snatch away all the hopes of the family from inheriting themselves. She turns the table on a family who think she is beneath them and really does have the last laugh!

Without giving too much of the plot away for those of you who haven’t read the book, Arabella in Ravenscourt disrupts Alexander’s family encouraging him to force them out of the family home, Wisteston Abbey, - a place she actively dislikes but she is subtly conveying her new power over Alex’s mother who snubs her socially. Alex’s mother also demonstrates female agency in the period or indeed lack of – as dowager duchess she must give way to her son and his new wife, affectively removed from her home, and relegated in society. Widows are made to dress in black for a certain period of time, forced into corners at social events, and made to feel inferior.

Jean Muir is definitely portrayed as a villain in Behind A Mask – she is very dislikeable – and the fact that Alcott herself uses what could be taken a male pseudonym is another clear piece of subversion by the author. If we take this as a protest to the British class system it is subtly done – the vacuous Coventry family are duped by a woman of ‘inferior’ status and quite possibly deserve all they get. I do wonder whether Sir John ever sees his wife as she really is – no wig, teeth etc – as surely she needs a child by him to really secure her place? Victorian attitudes to sex could save her here if she keeps her nightgown firmly in place!

Therefore, is it Victorian society and its rigid rules that is to blame for the Coventry family’s downfall? Muir deceives to survive in the only way she has available to her. Society creates Jean Muir and Arabella Pembrook because they have little choice.  Men are trapped by their beauty and intellect, the seduction of difference – both women are ‘outside’ their husbands social ranking.

Do we really blame these women for at least trying to be something other than they are told to be?