Character of Jean Muir in Alcott's Behind a Mask

This study will psychoanalyze the integrity of Jean Muir's happiness and success in Louisa May Alcott's novella Behind A Mask; or, A Woman's Power. The question is whether Jean surrenders all of her integrity, or even all of her true identity, in performing the various roles she plays as a governess, an actress, and an engaged woman, in order to achieve that success. The answer is that she may have lost some or much of her integrity, or even her identity in her reliance on the masks of her different roles, but in order to achieve success in the patriarchal, deception-ridden society in which she lives, she makes the choice to do whatever she has to do. This answer can only be appreciated if the reader accepts the world as portrayed by Alcott, and believes, as this reader does, that Alcott means Jean's tactics to be a sign of necessary strength, and not weakness.

An additional and related question is whether Jean is an hysteric. If she is in any meaningful way an hysteric, her hysteria is the most controlled and effective hysteria ever witnessed. Hysteria, to the patriarchal Freud, was largely confined to women suffering from an inability to express themselves (sometimes unto actual muteness) because of a real or imagined childhood sexual trauma (Kahane 281). No such trauma is reported by Alcott with respect to Jean. However, another aspect of hysteria introduces a fascinating possibility. Here Kahane relates hysteria and feminism;

Feminism, in its commitment to giving wome

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the truly precious things in life (Freud Civilization 1). Tellingly, Freud uses the masculine pronoun and goes on to discuss the worth of "great men" in such a cynical and hypocritical world. Jean is certainly no saint in her decision to play the game of pretense she plays so well, but neither is she worse than others--mostly men--who play the same game as ruthlessly as she does and without drawing nearly the degree of condemnation--if any--which is aimed at a woman doing the same. Can Jean be said to be ruled by a narcissistic ego in her game- and role-playing? Elliott seems to be saying that, if Jean is so ruled, it is a healthy step for a woman to be so inclined, for the society itself is ruled by men with narcissistic egos: [Muir] has taken . . . enlightened female interiority, which advocated the cultivation of virtue for the "self," as opposed to the "world," one step further by not serving the republic but herself as she maneuvers through he world of male approval to secure her own survival (Elliott 303). In other words, if she is a narcissist ruled by her ego, she is merely a female version of the males who run the society and are themselves narcissists. In fact, she turns their narcissism against them by convincing

Category: Literature - C