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Johnsy, a nickname for Joanna, is a young, despairing artist who shares a Greenwich Village apartment and studio with Sue. Johnsy comes from California, which the narrator suggests gives her less resilience to cold and sickness than Sue. Johnsy is very ill with pneumonia and has taken the doctor’s diagnosis as news that her death is inevitable.
Johnsy once dreamed of traveling to Italy to paint the Bay of Naples. It isn’t clear what, exactly, has caused her to give up on this dream. She may believe that her status an impoverished and struggling artist will keep this goal forever out of reach. She may even think her struggle is a sign that she’s failed as an artist. We can’t know for sure, since the narrator doesn’t give us more information about her internal experience. Even so, it’s clear that her pessimism has led her to abandon her dream of painting the Bay of Naples. In place of this dream, she convinced herself that she will die, and in her weakened state she does little other than gaze out of the window of her apartment, watching the vine climbing on the wall of the adjacent building. She believes that when the last leaf falls from the vine, she will die. But when the last leaf stubbornly refuses to fall, Johnsy takes it as a sign that she, too, should fight to survive. She ultimately recovers from her illness and comes fully back to life.
