Bertha

Bertha is a servant in the household of Randolph and Ellen Ash. In Ellen’s June 1859 journal, she first appears as a worker whose former reliability has given way to unfinished tasks, slowness, and sullen withdrawal. As Ellen gradually recognizes that Bertha is pregnant, the household’s response exposes the difference between professed Christian charity and the authority exercised over a vulnerable servant. Bertha is ordered to leave, offered the possibility of entering the Magdalen Home, and then slips away at night; Ellen’s later admission that she has treated her badly leaves Bertha’s fate uncertain.

Identity and place in the household

Ellen initially remembers Bertha as a “half-invisible busy birdlike presence,” an unobtrusive domestic worker who had begun her service successfully. Her expectations are shaped by the household’s difficult past: after the “uncertainties and dilapidations—and yes, violence and destruction” wrought by Bertha’s predecessors, Ellen had hoped this new servant would remain dependable. The contrast makes Bertha’s changed behavior especially visible to her employer: silver candlesticks remain tarnished beneath their rims, buttons are missing from Randolph’s nightshirt, and tasks are left unfinished.

Bertha’s work is woven into the practical arrangements of the house while Randolph is away. Ellen plans improvements to his comfort and assigns Bertha to beat and brush curtains made dusty by the cleaning. When visiting children turn the house into disorder, Bertha also makes up beds in the old Nursery. These ordinary responsibilities establish the position from which her pregnancy becomes a household matter: Ellen is both her employer and the person deciding whether she may remain in service.

The signs of trouble

Ellen first wonders whether Bertha is unhappy or unwell. She delays asking her directly, recognizing that the conversation will require courage and may disturb both Bertha’s and her own accustomed routines. When Patience visits, she immediately notices that something is wrong and guesses what it may be. Patience argues that postponing action will harm both Bertha and the household; to her, continued cohabitation with the visible consequence of sin is itself unacceptable.

Their disagreement is not merely about what Bertha has done, but about what an employer owes her. Patience recalls their mother’s practice of physically chastising servants she considered errant. Ellen rejects that inheritance: she says she will not beat a servant, and does not believe Randolph would strike anyone in their employment either. Yet her resistance to punishment does not amount to a way out of the household’s hierarchy. She concludes that Bertha must go before Randolph returns, describing dismissal as her duty even while the circumstances leave her troubled.

Pregnancy and conflicting duties

When Ellen finally speaks to Bertha, the suspicion is confirmed. Bertha cannot be brought to name the man responsible. She denies emphatically that he could be required to care for her, whether through marriage or in any other way, and shows neither penitence nor open defiance. Instead, she repeatedly asks, “What can I do?” Her reported words that “It all continues on whatever I will” convey her sense that events are proceeding beyond her control, without specifying what she expects or what will happen next.

Bertha also asks Ellen not to write to her mother. She fears the news would break her mother’s heart and set her permanently against her. This plea sharpens the practical questions Ellen cannot answer: where Bertha can go, what kind of home she might have, and what Christian charity requires. Ellen does not want to trouble Randolph’s work with the matter, but also recognizes that she is not empowered to do much for Bertha without his assent. Her concern therefore coexists with her reliance on the very authority that leaves Bertha’s options narrow.

Ellen’s anxieties include the household’s need to find a replacement and her fears about drunkenness, theft, breakages, and moral corruption among prospective servants. But the journal also makes her question the assumptions behind those fears. She wonders why servants would not feel hatred toward their employers, and doubts that a world divided between master and servant can truly be called natural by a Christian. Bertha’s predicament thus prompts Ellen to scrutinize the social order in which she herself holds power, even as she acts within it.

Dismissal and disappearance

Ellen tells Bertha that she must leave and that Herbert Baulk will arrange for her to be received at the Magdalen Home if she consents. Bertha gives no answer. Ellen records her inability to take in what she is being told, then dismisses her with the expectation that she will respond after considering the offer. Although Ellen thinks she should also have required her to leave by the end of the following week, she cannot bring herself to say so.

The next month, Bertha is found to have slipped away during the night with her possessions and, Ellen reports, some of Jenny’s belongings, including a carpet-bag and woollen shawl. Nothing belonging to the Ash household appears to have been taken, though silver has been left accessible. Ellen cannot tell whether Bertha has taken refuge with her mother, gone to the man, or found somewhere else to go; the journal does not resolve her destination. She wonders whether the household should pursue her and fears that doing so might appear retributive, though she says that would not be her intention.

Ellen’s retrospective judgment

The journal’s account is shaped by Ellen’s uncertainty rather than by access to Bertha’s private thoughts. Bertha’s brief questions and requests reach the reader through the employer who records them, while her own destination and later life remain outside the surviving account. That unevenness matters: Ellen can describe household duties and the decisions she makes, but cannot supply the answer to Bertha’s question about what she can do.

After Bertha’s departure, Ellen writes plainly that she has done wrong in her regard and behaved less than well. She also observes that Herbert Baulk is not tactful, though she knew this when she embarked on the course he helped arrange. This admission does not undo the dismissal or establish what became of Bertha. It instead leaves the episode with a moral consequence for Ellen: her attempt to combine duty, charity, and household control has failed to give Bertha security, and the servant’s disappearance exposes the limits of Ellen’s benevolent intentions.