Joan Harris walks into Sterling Cooper like she owns the oxygen. Red dress, cool eyes, spine like rebar. She runs the joint with a smile that cuts and a pencil that never misses. Years go by, men circle like busted ceiling fans, and she keeps the place from falling into the ashtray. Then she climbs higher—partner—because no one’s going to hand her a thing that isn’t already bruised.
Christina Hendricks plays her like a slow burn: all warmth on the outside, a locked safe underneath. Seven seasons of smoke and chrome and cheap whiskey later, you watch Joan juggle ambition with the lousy bargains the world offers. She knows what her looks buy in a crooked market. She knows what they cost. She haggles with the times anyway—takes the heat, pockets the chips, keeps moving.
This isn’t a princess story. It’s a ledger. The office showdowns, the humiliations dressed up as opportunities, the deals made when the rent comes due. She leverages what she’s got, learns where the exits are, and doesn’t cry in the bathroom; she reapplies lipstick and sends the memo. The symbolism’s not subtle: Joan is gravity in a room full of balloons. She’s proof a woman can be the engine and the billboard at once, and that the billboard gets weather-beaten while the engine keeps running.
Madison Avenue tries to catalog her—secretary, mistress, mother, partner—like tabs in a file. She won’t fit. She plays by the rules just long enough to cash them in, then writes a few of her own on company letterhead. When the boys’ club locks the doors, she finds a window. When they sell her short, she tallies interest. By the end, she’s cut loose from their smoke and their jokes, steering her own machine through the wreckage. Not pretty, not clean. But that’s the truth of it: Joan doesn’t escape the world; she beats it at its ugliest game and leaves the lights on behind her.
From Office Queen to Partner: Joan’s Character Development
Early Seasons (1–3): The Reigning Office Queen Bee. When we first meet Joan in Season 1, she is the office manager at Sterling Cooper, efficiently running the secretarial pool and keeping the executives in line. With her impeccable style and sharp command of office politics, Joan is the “queen bee” of the workplace. She mentors new secretary Peggy Olson with a mix of hard-edged advice and worldly wisdom – urging Peggy to dress attractively and even referring her to a doctor for birth control, reflecting Joan’s pragmatic awareness of office sexual dynamics. At this stage, Joan appears confident and in control, using her charm and femininity as tools to thrive at work.
Yet, beneath the confident façade, Joan harbors traditional dreams. She openly states that her ultimate goal is to be “the beloved wife behind a successful man,” not just a career woman. Unlike Peggy, who pursues a copywriting career, Joan initially envisions her success through marriage. In Season 2, she gets engaged to Dr. Greg Harris, hoping he will be the prosperous, devoted husband of her dreams. However, cracks soon appear. In a disturbing Season 2 scene (“The Mountain King”), Greg rapes Joan in Don’s office after she playfully resists his advances. Joan’s choice to marry him anyway exemplifies how she compromises her own dignity to meet societal expectations – a heartbreaking decision that shocked viewers and highlighted Joan’s vulnerability. By Season 3, Joan has married Greg and, as expected of a 1960s wife, she leaves her job to support his career. For a time she even works at a department store (Bonwit Teller) to make ends meet when Greg’s medical career falters. This period underscores Joan’s inner conflict: she excels in the workplace, but feels pressured to abandon it for a promised life of domestic security – a promise Greg utterly fails to fulfill.
Mid-Series (Seasons 4–5): Sacrifices and a Rise to Power. Joan’s trajectory takes a turn when Sterling Cooper collapses and Don Draper recruits her to help start a new firm in the Season 3 finale. She jumps back into work, proving indispensable in assembling Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (SCDP). In Season 4, Joan is again the office manager, now at SCDP, and her competence is on full display. One memorable incident in “Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency” has a secretary run over a visitor’s foot with a lawnmower; amidst the chaos, Joan calmly takes charge, demonstrating that the office can’t function without her. Still, as a woman she faces constant disrespect. A young freelance artist, Joey, harasses Joan with vile jokes (asking what she does besides “walking around wanting to get raped”) and even posts a lewd cartoon of her. Joan retaliates with cutting wit – “I hope you get drafted”, she tells Joey, alluding to Vietnam – but pointedly does not exercise what little authority she has to punish him. It’s actually Peggy who fires Joey, an act that paradoxically upsets Joan. Joan explains to Peggy that by openly defending her, Peggy made her look weak, like a “humorless bitch” in the eyes of the men. This tense scene highlights Joan’s precarious position: she must project unshakable composure in order to survive among the office chauvinists, even if it means swallowing indignities.
During this time, Joan’s personal life reaches a breaking point. In Season 5, after Joan gives birth to a son (Kevin) – a child fathered by Roger Sterling but being raised as Greg’s – her marriage finally implodes. In the episode “Mystery Date,” Greg returns from military duty in Vietnam and reveals he’s going back for another year – a decision he made unilaterally. Joan’s anger boils over as she realizes Greg prefers the glory of the Army to being with his family. In a cathartic confrontation, she tells him to “go and never come back,” adding that she’s “sick of trying to make [him] feel like a man” and declaring “You’re not a good man. You never were.” It’s a powerful moment of Joan reclaiming her agency – she finally casts off the dead weight of a husband who brought her more pain than security, implicitly referencing the rape as proof of his bad character. As a newly single mother, Joan turns fully back to her career to provide for herself and her child.
Joan’s most controversial and pivotal moment comes in Season 5’s “The Other Woman.” The firm is desperate to land the Jaguar account, and sleazy client Herb Rennet demands a night with Joan as part of the deal. When Pete Campbell broaches this ugly proposition, Joan is appalled – she icily calls it “prostitution,” flat-out refusing despite Pete’s oily attempts to frame it as her Cleopatra moment of saving the company. However, faced with her own financial pressures (a baby to support, a broken fridge at home, and a sense that this may be her only shot at true partnership), Joan makes a painful calculation. In a twist that shocked audiences, she agrees to sleep with Herb in exchange for a 5% partnership stake in SCDP. This sequence is intercut with Don Draper pitching Jaguar with a metaphor of the car as an unattainable mistress – underscoring the uncomfortable reality that Joan herself is being “sold” as a commodity. The next morning, Joan joins the partners’ meeting and becomes a partner at SCDP, but at a tremendous personal cost. Viewers’ hearts broke seeing Joan compromise herself in this way, and indeed within the show it leaves a residue of tension. (Don, who had vehemently opposed the deal, is devastated to discover Joan went through with it, and Joan later bitterly scolds him for undermining “the sacrifice [she] made” when Don fires Jaguar in a fit of pique.) Despite the ugliness of how it happened, Joan’s partnership is a watershed – she now has a seat at the table she was long denied. Across the series Joan progresses “from being the office manager keeping the secretaries in line… to being a partner at the ad firm,” an impressive climb in a sexist era.
Late Seasons (6–7): Struggles at the Top and a New Beginning. In the final seasons, Joan truly tests the waters of power beyond her office-manager domain. By Season 6 and 7, she is not just handling administrative duties but also working as an account executive, managing clients like Avon and Butler Footwear. We see a hardened, more business-savvy Joan by this point – the series shows that repeated betrayals by men have drained some of her early optimism, replacing it with a focus on monetary security and respect. In one Season 6 storyline, Joan spots an opening to bring in Avon as a client and boldly pursues the lead on her own. Initially she fumbles (in her eagerness, she nearly alienates Avon by keeping the meeting secret from the experienced accounts man, Pete), but with Peggy’s help they salvage the pitch. The incident is a learning moment for Joan about asserting herself in an arena traditionally reserved for men. It also reinforces her growing camaraderie with Peggy – once youthful rivals, now allies carving out space in the firm for women with ambition.
Despite her title as partner, Joan is never treated fully as an equal by her male counterparts. A telling example comes when Harry Crane, head of media (but not a partner), openly resents Joan’s partnership. In a meeting, Harry crudely implies Joan only made partner by prostituting herself – humiliating her in front of others. Joan’s power in name doesn’t shield her from misogyny: to some colleagues she’s still the bombshell who slept her way upstairs. This continues when the firm is absorbed by the giant McCann Erickson in Season 7. At McCann, Joan experiences wall-to-wall sexism – clients and coworkers make lewd comments and treat her as an unwelcome woman in the boys’ club. In the episode “Lost Horizon,” Joan tries to go through proper channels to address the harassment, even meeting with the head of McCann. The result is disillusioning: Jim Hobart (McCann’s chief) first condescends to Joan, then basically tells her to drop it. He offers to buy out her contract at 50 cents on the dollar to get rid of her rather than take her complaints seriously. Joan initially vows to fight (“I wonder how many women around here would like to speak to the New York Times?” she threatens, implying she’ll go public). But when even Roger Sterling advises her to take the money and run, Joan decides to walk away rather than endure further humiliation. It’s a bittersweet exit: Joan leaves McCann with a fat check (ensuring financial stability for herself and her son), but she must abandon the career in advertising she spent a decade building.
In the series finale, however, Joan turns this setback into a triumph. She uses her payout to start her own company, Holloway-Harris, producing industrial films. In one of the final scenes, we see Joan confidently working from her dining room-turned-office, a phone in one hand and a smile on her face – finally her own boss. She had earlier tried to interest Peggy in joining her venture (a poignant passing of the torch, as Peggy chooses to stay in corporate life), and Joan’s decision to forge ahead solo encapsulates her journey. By 1970, she’s a single mother and an entrepreneur, defying every expectation she once had for herself. In the end, Joan’s finale “finds her as a successful business owner and single mother,” which perfectly shows her evolution – “she understands the system, she plays within the system, and, in the end, she beats the system.” It’s hard to imagine a more fitting outcome for a character who spent years navigating and subtly subverting the power structures around her.
The Symbolic Role of Joan Harris in Mad Men
Beyond her personal storyline, Joan Harris serves a symbolic role in Mad Men’s exploration of gender and power. Creator Matthew Weiner once noted he wanted Joan to be an unpredictable, complicated woman – not a stock character. In many ways, Joan represents a third path of womanhood in the 1960s, distinct from the show’s other principal women. Critics have observed that Joan occupies a middle ground between the era’s two prevalent female archetypes: Betty Draper, the full-time housewife who relinquished her career, and Peggy Olson, the career-focused woman forging ahead in a “man’s world.” Joan starts out closer to Betty’s camp – valuing marriage and feminine ideals – but she’s also a savvy working woman like Peggy. She embodies both the constraints and the possibilities for women of her generation.
In the early seasons, Joan is often perceived (by characters and viewers alike) as the office femme fatale – voluptuous, red-haired, a magnet for male attention. She herself is aware of this image and even cultivates it: “Men love her because she’s in touch with her sexuality and femininity,” actress Christina Hendricks explains of Joan’s allure. Unlike many women around her, Joan isn’t shy about using her appeal; she banters with the guys and can “play” with them on their level without catching feelings or offense. This makes her the subject of a famous sight gag in Season 2’s “Maidenform” episode: while the men crudely categorize all the office women as either Marilyn Monroe types or Jackie Kennedytypes, one copywriter quips, “Marilyn’s really a Joan, not the other way around.” In other words, Joan is the standard by which even archetypal sex symbols are measured – a testament to how Mad Men uses her character to personify 1960s feminine mystique.
However, the show continually peels back layers to reveal the cost of being that “ideal woman.” Joan’s glamorous image and dutiful behavior mask the compromises and indignities she endures. She’s the office siren who organizes the Christmas party, hands out traveler’s checks, and makes sure the men have their secretaries and steaks – essentially playing den mother and object of desire at once. This dual role is symbolic of the limited lanes available to women: be competent and keep things running, but also be attractive and pleasing. Joan manages both, which is why the office can’t function without her, yet the men still underestimate her. A great example of Joan’s symbolic function is how the Jaguar storyline in Season 5 turns her into a living emblem of the show’s critique of sexism. The idea of literally trading Joan’s body for a car account is supposed to make us uncomfortable – it lays bare the transactional way men like Herb (and some of Joan’s own colleagues) view women. The show seems to ask: in a world that already treats Joan like a sexy mascot, is this deal really so different? Joan’s eventual decision to go through with it, while painful, underscores how trapped she (and women of that era) could feel. It’s telling that Joan initially imagines all the partners united in asking this of her – as if this is what her valued role boils down to. And in truth, most of the men did silently consent, betraying her trust. Joan thus becomes a tragic symbol of women’s objectification, even as she tries to turn that objectification into leverage (securing herself a partnership).
By the final season, Joan symbolizes something else as well: the quietly revolutionary notion that a woman can choose herself over the approval of men. When Joan walks away from McCann and starts her own business, she’s making a statement that echoes beyond her character – it speaks to the dawn of the 1970s women’s liberation movement. After all the sexism and heartbreak, Joan claims her life on her own terms. In doing so, she becomes, as one article called her, “the embodiment of what Mad Men was all about” – the struggle to find personal identity versus societal expectation. Joan’s journey from trophy-in-training to independent entrepreneur encapsulates the larger cultural shifts of the 60s.
Navigating a Male-Dominated World: Joan’s Power Moves
One of the most fascinating aspects of Joan Harris is how strategically she navigates the patriarchal environment of Madison Avenue. Surrounded by men who routinely call women “girls” and treat them as subordinates or playthings, Joan learns to exercise influence in subtle ways. In the early days, her power is largely informal. As office manager, she knows everyone’s secrets and how to pull the right strings. Need to get a report fast or deal with a difficult client? Joan can make it happen, often by managing the men’s egos. For example, she runs Sterling Cooper’s office with an iron fist in a velvet glove – coordinating meetings, prodding the (often careless) executives to do their jobs, and enforcing protocol (she’s the one reminding secretaries to address senior staff as “Mr. [Name]” and not by first name). Her authority might not have a fancy title initially, but it’s real. As Bert Cooper quips, the place would fall apart without her, a truth proven whenever Joan takes time off.
Joan also wields sexuality as a form of power, albeit a double-edged one. She understands that in her world, a flashed smile or a well-tailored dress can accomplish more than open confrontation. A classic Joan move is using humor or flirtation to defuse a man’s condescension. When a male client makes a pass, Joan might chuckle and redirect the conversation, rather than openly rebuff and anger him – thereby keeping the business on track while maintaining her dignity. In short, she “plays the game.” As Hendricks noted, Joan doesn’t run to the ladies’ room in tears when men tease her; she gives as good as she gets, which paradoxically earns her a measure of respect from the very men who objectify her.
However, Joan is not invulnerable in this male-dominated arena. There are moments when the power imbalance is stark. The Joey incident in Season 4 is one example: a young male employee openly harasses her, secure in the knowledge that as a man (and a creative), he’s unlikely to face consequences from the all-male higher-ups. Joan’s normal tactics – a scathing remark, an appeal to decency – aren’t enough in this case. She’s left seething at her lack of formal authority, which is why Peggy’s intervention, while well-intended, bruises Joan’s pride. Joan’s comment that Peggy made her look like a fool to “half the men in this room” reveals her keen awareness of how any sign of weakness can erode what little respect she’s gained. In a perverse way, Joan would have preferred to handle Joey herself (even if that meant enduring him a bit longer), because maintaining the image that she’s in control is part of her survival strategy.
Throughout Mad Men, Joan continually tests the limits of her influence and adapts to new power dynamics. Once she becomes a junior partner at SCDP, Joan has official power – a vote, a title – but still fights to be taken seriously. We see her assert herself in partners’ meetings, sometimes clashing with Don or Pete when their actions threaten the firm’s stability or her own stake. For instance, after Don impulsively fires Jaguar in Season 6, Joan furiously confronts Don for jeopardizing an account that cost her dearly to obtain. It’s one of the few times we see Joan unabashedly challenge Don Draper, indicative of her growth in confidence. She tells him in no uncertain terms that his stunt “cost [her] money” and was unacceptable. This moment is significant – Joan is no longer content to be a behind-the-scenes figurehead; she insists on being heard, even if it means calling out the firm’s golden boy.
Yet even as partner, Joan has to tread carefully. Her male partners often oscillate between treating her like a peer and treating her like an expendable woman. Roger Sterling, with whom Joan has a long, complicated history, clearly respects her abilities and cares for her, but even he frequently undermines her agency (for example, assuming she’ll be fine with the Jaguar arrangement, or later advising her to give up her fight at McCann). Joan’s mentorship with Lane Pryce is another nuanced dynamic: Lane values Joan’s competence and relies on her deeply in running the agency’s operations. The two share a touching friendship, bonding over keeping the unruly business in order. But even Lane crosses a line – in a moment of despair, he drunkenly kisses Joan, betraying the professional trust between them. Joan swiftly but gently rebuffs him, making it clear that even friendly allies can’t presume entitlement to her. It’s a small scene, but it reinforces how Joan must constantly enforce her boundaries amid pervasive sexism.
In the final season, the McCann Erickson arc throws Joan into perhaps the most hostile male environment yet. The larger agency’s culture is blatantly predatory, and Joan’s previous strategies no longer suffice. When crude jokes and come-ons turn into outright sabotage of her work, Joan escalates the fight – trying, for once, to use the institutional power (HR, legal threat) to protect herself. It’s poignant and infuriating that even in 1970, those channels fail her. Joan is effectively told: take the payout and shut up. Her decision to accept the buyout isn’t defeat so much as pragmatism – a trait Joan has in spades. She calculates that her energy is better spent building something new than fighting an entrenched boys’ club that will never respect her. In a final power move on her own terms, Joan starts her own production company, proving that if the system won’t change, she’ll create a place where she holds the power. In the context of the show, this is revolutionary: Joan breaks away from the need for male approval or inclusion entirely.
Ambition, Sexuality, and Societal Expectations: Joan’s Balancing Act
A recurring theme in Joan’s story is her constant balancing act between what she wants and what society expects of her as a woman. Joan is unapologetically ambitious, but her ambitions are complicated by her adherence to 1960s feminine norms. Unlike Peggy, whose ambition is focused on professional achievement, Joan’s early ambition is to achieve the ideal of having it all – the successful husband, the comfortable home, and the esteem that comes from being a “Mrs.” to an important man. She invests heavily in this dream: honing her social graces, mastering domestic skills, and always presenting herself as the catch every man would want. This is evident in how she coaches the other secretaries on charm and appearance and how she carefully navigates her affair with Roger, never letting it threaten her end goal of finding a suitable husband. Society tells Joan that marriage and motherhood are the pinnacle of a woman’s life, and for a while she truly believes it.
At the same time, Joan genuinely enjoys work and is damn good at it. There’s a part of her that thrives on the purpose and respect her competence brings. We see flickers of Joan’s own career aspirations in Season 2 when she is briefly assigned to read scripts for Harry Crane’s TV department – she loves the challenge and excels at it. But when Harry hires a less qualified man for the role instead of her, Joan swallows her disappointment and returns to her secretarial post, as if acknowledging that pushing for a man’s job is a step too far. This compromise underscores the tension between her personal ambition and the era’s expectations. For much of the series, Joan tries to have it both ways: be the model secretary/office manager (a traditionally female role) and fulfill her potential at work, all while pursuing the traditional route of marriage.
Joan’s sexuality is another aspect she constantly balances. She takes pride in her appearance and isn’t ashamed to leverage her sex appeal – whether it’s getting the switchboard girls to cooperate or charming a difficult client at a dinner. She knows that being attractive can be a form of currency in interactions with men. Importantly, Joan wields this power with a clear set of rules: she flirts but keeps her professionalism, she allows men to fantasize but maintains control. For example, she orchestrates the office folk singing performance in Season 3 (“Babylon”) wearing a revealing red dress that leaves the men speechless – she commands the room, even as they ogle her. Yet, she draws lines: when a male colleague or client oversteps, Joan will swiftly put them in their place with an acidic remark or an icy stare. In short, she uses sexuality, but refuses to be defined solely by it.
The dilemma for Joan is that society often refuses to see beyond her sexuality. No matter how competent Joan is, many men (and women) assume she’s gotten ahead by sleeping with someone. This comes to a head after the Jaguar ordeal – an extreme case where Joan actually did use sex for advancement, albeit under desperate circumstances. Subsequently, Joan works hard to redefine her image from bombshell office manager to serious account executive. In Season 6, after a friend admires her “power” as a partner, Joan has an epiphany that she’s still acting like a secretary in many ways. She promptly delegates administrative duties to her subordinate (hiring Peggy’s secretary, Dawn, to manage the office logistics) so she can focus on higher-level work. It’s a conscious effort by Joan to align her self-presentation with her new ambitions – essentially saying, I’m not window dressing here, I’m an executive. Despite these efforts, she can’t fully escape others’ perceptions (witness Harry’s cruel comment), but it marks a significant shift in Joan’s mindset. She begins valuing her own talent and earning power more openly, a sign of the changing times and Joan’s personal growth.
Societal expectations also bear down on Joan’s personal life. In the 1960s, being a single mother or a divorcée carried stigma, and Joan ends up both. We see her mother, Gail, subtly shame her for returning to work after having Kevin, suggesting Joan should be home with her baby and let her husband provide. This reflects the era’s prevailing idea that a good mother stays home. Joan, however, feels a pull back to the office – she admits that even with a baby at home, she misses work and fears being left behind. Her decision to resume her job is a quietly rebellious act against what a “good wife and mother” is supposed to do, and it foreshadows Joan’s eventual path of carving out an identity beyond just someone’s wife. When her marriage implodes, Joan faces the prospect of lifelong single motherhood, something she once dreaded (recall her Season 1 tears over Marilyn Monroe’s lonely death, worrying she might “end up alone”). But by series’ end Joan has reframed this status not as a failure, but as freedom. She even turns down a convenient marriage proposal from Bob Benson, who offers to marry her (despite being gay) to solve both their societal “problems” – Joan refuses because “both of [them] deserve real love,” not a cynical arrangement. It’s a strong statement that Joan won’t settle for a hollow facsimile of the dream she once had.
A key contrast in Mad Men is between Joan and Peggy, who represent two ways of balancing (or not balancing) femininity with ambition. Peggy downplays her sexuality to be taken seriously – she initially wears boxy clothes, and even when her style modernizes, she’s all business in the boardroom. Joan, in contrast, embraces her femininity and finds a way to make it part of her professional persona. As one analysis noted, Peggy often “attempts to de-sexualize herself” to get ahead, whereas Joan “continues to use her sexuality as currency” in navigating the patriarchal society. Neither approach shields them entirely from sexism (Peggy faces her own slights), but it’s fascinating that Joan’s path requires her to carry the weight of being an object of desire and a competent worker simultaneously. And unlike Don Draper – a man who also skillfully uses charm and sexual power but suffers none of the stigma – Joan must constantly prove she’s more than just a pretty face.
By the end of Mad Men, Joan has made peace with who she is. She tells her lover Richard that she needs to work, that it fulfills her in a way leisure in semi-retirement cannot. When Richard balks at her business ambition (he expected her to be free to travel and play house with him), Joan chooses her company over the relationship. This is a radical choice for Joan, who once measured her success by having a man by her side. It signifies that Joan’s ambition ultimately wins out over societal expectations. Not ambition in a cold, careerist sense – but ambition to live life on her own terms, whether that includes a man or not. She still enjoys love and romance (we see her happy with Richard until they disagree on her work), but she won’t subordinate her goals to keep a man’s approval. In a casual conversation earlier in Season 7, Joan even jokes about how far she’s come: “A lot of people who used to know me in the old days wouldn’t like what I’m doing now.” It’s true – the old Joan might not have recognized the Joan who turns down a jet-set life with a rich husband-figure to write up business contracts in her pajamas. But that evolution is precisely what makes Joan Harris such a rich, satisfying character.
Conclusion
Joan Harris’s story in Mad Men is a microcosm of the changing landscape for women in the 1960s. Throughout the series, Joan grows from someone who expertly plays within the rules of a male-defined world to someone who gradually rewrites the rules for herself. Her journey is marked by poignant contradictions: she is both a victim of her circumstances and a shrewd agent of her own destiny. She can type 100 words a minute and manage a bustling office, but she can also command a room with a sultry look and a witty retort. She yearns for traditional love and respect, yet she forges a new path when the traditional route fails her. Joan’s ability to balance ambition, sexuality, and societal expectations is not perfect – at times the imbalance causes her great pain – but in the end she strikes a harmony that works for her.
In a show celebrated for its complex characters, Joan stands out as especially multifaceted and real. She’s not idealized as a saint or vilified as a schemer; instead, Mad Men allows Joan to be a competent office manager, a supportive friend, a vulnerable lover, a protective mother, and a determined businesswoman all in one. The casual viewer can’t help but admire her poise and sass, while a critical lens reveals the intricate commentary her character provides on gender dynamics. Whether she’s suavely handling a Xerox machine mishap or staring down a boardroom full of condescending men, Joan commands attention and earns our empathy. By the series finale, when Joan Holloway Harris confidently launches her own venture, it feels like a victory not just for her, but for every woman who had to fight that much harder to be taken seriously. Joan’s story reminds us that progress often comes one hard-won step at a time – and she took some of the hardest steps with unapologetic grace and grit. As the AV Club rightly noted, given all her struggles and triumphs, it’s easy to see Joan as “Mad Men’s true hero”, a character who in many ways beat the system by never losing sight of her own worth.
