The Bell Jar: Chapter 19 Summary & Analysis

Some time later, Joan announces to Esther that she’s going to be a psychiatrist, a plan supported by her own psychiatrist, Dr. Quinn, whose “abstract quality” entails discussion of “Egos and Ids” and gives Esther “chills.” Joan brags that she is also moving out of the asylum by becoming one of the nurse’s roommates. Esther is jealous that Joan will beat her out the door, though she herself will leave the asylum, too, in a more permanent capacity than Joan: she will be returning to college for the winter term. She is just staying on at the asylum until then, as the doctors have vetoed her spending the interval with her mother back home.

Some time later, Esther loses her virginity to Irwin, a math professor she met on the steps of the Harvard library and decided to seduce after seeing his book-crammed study. While Esther was visiting his study, Irwin was visited by and turned away another woman, who Esther assumes he’s been sexually involved with. After meeting him she called for permission to stay overnight in town, telling Dr. Nolan she’d sleep over with Joan. Esther feels that her virginity has “weighed like a millstone around my neck” ever since she found out about Buddy’s affair. She is eager to discard her virginity with Irwin, who she thinks an ideal candidate to lose it to because he is both intelligent and experienced.

Esther expects sex with Irwin to yield a “miraculous change” in her, but she only feels pain. She asks Irwin if pain is normal. He says it is and gets up to shower. Esther feels a lot of blood seeping between her legs. Irwin comes back and assures her it’ll be fine, though Esther is bleeding enough to drench several towels. She has Irwin drive her to Joan’s apartment in Cambridge and tells a befuddled Joan to call a doctor because she’s hemorrhaging. Esther avoids telling Joan she’s just lost her virginity. After several doctors hang up when Joan says it’s a problem about “a period,” Esther has Joan bring her to the Emergency Room in a taxi and Esther manages to tell a nurse there the truth without Joan hearing. A doctor tells Esther her case is “one in a million” and fixes her up.

Back at the asylum some days later, Esther is awakened in the night by Dr. Quinn looking for Joan. Since her brief stint in Cambridge, Joan has returned to Belsize to live but has free town privileges. She has apparently not returned from a trip to the movie and can’t be found. Esther has no leads. At dawn, Dr. Quinn returns to tell Esther that Joan has been found dead, having hung herself in the woods of the asylum.