Bersa leaves the Ash family

Bertha’s departure from the Ash household is the consequence of a Victorian domestic crisis: she is pregnant, will not name the man responsible, and faces uncertain shelter and support. The episode follows Ellen Ash’s struggle to respond to her servant’s circumstances without either repeating the punishment she remembers from her own childhood or relinquishing the authority her position gives her. Bertha’s nighttime disappearance leaves Ellen with unanswered questions—and with the recognition that good intentions have not prevented her from doing wrong.

Discovery and Household Judgment

A private conversation with Patience brings Ellen’s suspicions about Bertha’s condition into focus. Patience believes the matter cannot be allowed to continue unaddressed, and sees continued cohabitation with the visible consequence of sexual wrongdoing as contaminating. Ellen resists the punitive implications of this view. She recalls her mother chasing a servant, Thyrza Collitt, through the house with an upraised arm, and insists that neither she nor Patience will beat a servant. Her memory makes the household’s response to Bertha more than a question of discipline: it confronts Ellen with an inherited model of class authority enforced through physical chastisement, which she refuses to reproduce.

When Ellen speaks to Bertha, the young woman weeps but will not identify the responsible man. She firmly denies that he can be made to support her by marrying her or in any other way. She shows neither penitence nor defiance; instead, she repeatedly asks what she can do. Her further remark, that everything continues regardless of what she wills, conveys a sense of limited power without supplying an explanation of her circumstances. Ellen considers writing to Bertha’s mother, but Bertha begs her not to: it would break her mother’s heart and turn her against her forever. The conversation leaves the practical questions unresolved—where Bertha can live, how she can be supported, and what Ellen is entitled to decide on her behalf.

An Attempt at Provision

Ellen does not want to burden Randolph with the matter while he is away pursuing his work, yet she knows that she lacks authority to make substantial arrangements for Bertha without his assent. She also thinks of the risks involved in finding a replacement servant, listing fears of drunkenness, theft, breakages, and moral corruption. Her concern for Bertha thus exists alongside the household’s need for domestic labor and Ellen’s apprehension about whom to admit into the home.

When Herbert Baulk visits for tea, Ellen asks him about Bertha. He describes an institution that provides for women in her position through childbirth and, where possible, helps them return to useful employment. Ellen offers to contribute to Bertha’s maintenance until the birth, committing Randolph’s money without first securing his agreement. The institution’s practical arrangements matter in her account: the inmates keep the dormitories clean and cook plain, nourishing food for themselves. It offers a possible route to shelter and work rather than a resolution of Bertha’s relationship with the unnamed father. Ellen’s intervention is therefore both an effort to secure care and an assertion of authority she has acknowledged is not wholly hers to exercise.

Disappearance and Uncertainty

In July, Bertha is found to have left during the night with all her possessions and some things that Jenny claims as her own, including a carpet-bag and a woollen shawl. Nothing belonging to the Ash household appears to have been taken, although the silver has been left out or made readily accessible in drawers and cabinets. Ellen cannot tell whether Bertha mistook the shawl, whether Jenny is mistaken, or where Bertha has gone. The details complicate any simple account of the departure as theft: the disputed possessions are not clearly identified as the household’s, and the accessible silver remains untouched.

Ellen considers whether Bertha has taken refuge with her mother, despite her earlier plea that her mother not be told, or gone to the man whose name she withheld. She asks whether the household should pursue her, reasoning that Bertha cannot have gone to the streets in her condition, but worries that an attempt to find her may seem retributive even if that is not its purpose. The narrative does not confirm Bertha’s destination or whether she receives the institutional help Ellen had proposed. Her departure ends Ellen’s ability to manage the crisis directly, leaving concern and uncertainty in its place.

Ellen’s Reckoning

After Bertha disappears, Ellen gives Jenny one of her own shawls and a travelling-case. The practical gesture echoes the disputed shawl Bertha took or was believed to have taken, but the diary does not present the gift as compensation or explain Ellen’s motive. More directly, Ellen records that she has done wrong in Bertha’s regard and behaved less than well. Her judgment unsettles the earlier confidence that she could discharge her duty simply by asking Bertha to leave or arranging a charitable institution.

The episode also exposes Ellen’s unease about the social order that makes her both Bertha’s employer and a judge of her conduct. She recalls Patience’s assertion that servants are naturally ungrateful and poorly educated, then wonders why servants should not instead feel hatred when they are questioned and judged by their employers. She cannot reconcile a world divided between master and servant with Christian teaching that places particular urgency on the poor and lowly. Bertha’s disappearance does not resolve that contradiction; it makes the consequences of Ellen’s position harder to evade. The event is narrated through Ellen’s diary, so the reader sees both the decisions she makes and the self-criticism with which she later revises her account of them.