Written under a pseudonym, Behind a Mask is an example of sensation fiction, a genre popularized by British and American readers in the mid-19th century. Popularized by authors like Wilkie Collins, whose 1860 novel The Woman in White (1860) is a cornerstone of the genre, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, author of Lady Audley’s Secret (1862), sensation fiction employs suspense, shocking secrets, and criminal intrigue within a seemingly respectable domestic setting. These novels often center on themes of bigamy, insanity, and hidden identities, challenging Victorian ideals of social stability and passive femininity. By combining the novel modes of realism and romance, sensation fiction explored contemporary anxieties brought about by social upheavals inherent in industrialization and urbanization, which made identity less obviously fixed.

The figure of the governess is a frequent protagonist in these tales because of her class ambiguity. Educated but poor, governesses were seen as an unstable in-between: neither fully servants nor equal to the families they served. In sensation fiction, the governess is an insider with an outsider’s perspective, privy to the family’s secrets yet possessing no secure place within its structure. This liminality fuels Jean’s deception; she’s described as “poor, and a stranger” (3), a status that prompts Bella, Edward, and Mrs. Coventry to pity her as they would a social equal. Later, her tragic history of supposed noble birth secures the affections of Gerald, the most vocally class-conscious member of the family. 

For the character of Jean, Alcott also draws on the archetype of the adventuress, typically featured in stories about women specifically out to secure marriages outside their station. Alcott’s Jean is the literary descendant of characters like Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders from Moll Flanders (1722) or William Makepeace Thackeray’s Becky Sharp from Vanity Fair (1847)—prime examples of clever and manipulative women characters seeking social advancement.