Alcott examines both angel and monster, and in some locations deftly combines the two into one entire and affirmative character. She displays us that all functions for women, from angel to monster, are probably masks which may be beneficial for the women tricked in evidently limiting functions if those functions are utilised to the best advantage. Alcott transcends the angel by displaying us non-angels who are still loved and thriving in the characters. She furthermore displays us the limitations for the angel in the kitchen when her expert of the world denies to work inside that world’s male functions by permitting us a peek.
She does these things to farther characterise who her own "I" might be. If it is "debilitating to be anywoman in a humanity where women are alerted that if they do not act like angels they should be monsters, then Alcott’s denial to be controlled by this duality (so superior in her own dwelling through Bronson’s individual beliefs) displays her exceptional power of will. If that does not specify her as a large author then it certainly should specify her as a large woman. Louisa May Alcott was a woman who transcended her society’s and her family’s anticipated roles. She was an "actress and woman" to be considered with.
The public Self-masking and private unmasking of governess Jean Muir in Louisa May Alcott’s novella Behind a Mask, or a Woman’s Power (1866) reflect on a physical level the ideological possibilities for and limitations of women’s authenticity within the domestic culture of this period. Muir’s brilliant manipulation of her employers to secure her own economic and social survival deploys exaggeratedly parodic ("masked") performances of female virtue and charm. Her private "unmasked" moments, however, reveal the fatigue, despair, and rage which this performance and her economic situation cause her. In Alcott’s later, semi-autobiographical novel Work (1873), she provides additional accounts of the tensions between public and private female selfhood and the costs of professionalism. As Christie Devon, the novel’s actress-protagonist, states as she examines her fatigued and aging face, "If three years of this life have made me this, what shall I be in ten? A fine actress perhaps, but how good a woman?"
