Behind a Mask (Hogarth fiction) - Softcover

The lives of women have changed so much that nothing like this could be written now, but apart from the historical interest, once you know the author wrote Little Women and Good Wives – some may think improbably – then this tale becomes irresistible.
The heroine is the figure that plays such a part in nineteenth-century fiction, and well into the twentieth century, the woman with no assets but her talents and, if she is lucky, good looks. She has enough of an education to be a lady. She shades off into the adventuresses of Henry James, Trollope and Oscar Wilde, and at the other end of the spectrum of respectability she is the governess, with Lucy Snow and Jane Eyre. Not one of the family, but not a servant either, she is poor and honest, knowing her place but self-respecting, her virtues surely conspiring against her to make her lot as bad as it can be. To be a governess or a companion – the dread of it darkens pages in books as diverse as Vanity Fair and Daniel Deronda. This governess Miss Muir is not good, she is as amoral as she needs to be: she schemes, she plots, she plans, aided by a battery of accomplishments you are tempted to think must be impossible in one person. But then, if you have nothing but your charms and your talents they must be made the most of.

American novelist Louisa May Alcott (1832 - 88) is best remembered for the perennially popular Little Women. Winner of the David Cohen British Literature Prize in 2001, Doris Lessing is one of the most eminent figures in world literature.