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".
