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A review by thewallflower00
Behind a Mask, Or, a Woman's Power by Louisa May Alcott
2.0
So for 9th grade English, my eldest daughter’s assignment was to choose from a selection of public domain books. She chose this because this was the shortest. And I don’t blame her. It’s bad enough that classic literature is limited to what a bunch of stuffy old white males “decided” kids should learn (I’m looking at you Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby). It’s stuff like this that makes kids abhor reading. Good literature can be fun too (I’m looking at you Lord of the Rings).
Anyway, this is categorized as a “thriller”. Or what they’d consider a thriller in 1866. I guess they called it that because it’s about–shock of shocks–a woman with agency. Unlike other Austen-esque novel, she’s the bad guy. A sort of a femme fatale, like “I fooled you all, and now I stand triumphant.” And her victims are the Coventry.
This woman is hired as a governess for a British family, but at the end of the chapter, she reveals to the audience that she’s acting — she’s got a wig and false teeth. But it reveals nothing about her motivation besides getting out of poverty, I guess. Like an inverse version of The Making of a Marchioness. Anyway, nothing happens for the next six out of nine chapters. It’s just a bunch of faffing about. Then she manipulates a few people so that she can marry the old rich uncle of the family just in time to render her revealed secret irrelevant. I find no reason to read this today. I read it so I could help my daughter out with her assignment (which she did not end up asking me for — she’s very independent).
Anyway, this is categorized as a “thriller”. Or what they’d consider a thriller in 1866. I guess they called it that because it’s about–shock of shocks–a woman with agency. Unlike other Austen-esque novel, she’s the bad guy. A sort of a femme fatale, like “I fooled you all, and now I stand triumphant.” And her victims are the Coventry.
This woman is hired as a governess for a British family, but at the end of the chapter, she reveals to the audience that she’s acting — she’s got a wig and false teeth. But it reveals nothing about her motivation besides getting out of poverty, I guess. Like an inverse version of The Making of a Marchioness. Anyway, nothing happens for the next six out of nine chapters. It’s just a bunch of faffing about. Then she manipulates a few people so that she can marry the old rich uncle of the family just in time to render her revealed secret irrelevant. I find no reason to read this today. I read it so I could help my daughter out with her assignment (which she did not end up asking me for — she’s very independent).