Mrs. Joe Gargery Quotes

My sister, Mrs. Joe Gargery, was more than twenty years older than I, and had established a great reputation with herself and the neighbours because she had brought me up “by hand.” Having at that time to find out for myself what the expression meant, and knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by hand. She was not a good-looking woman, my sister; and I had a general impression that she must have made Joe Gargery marry her by hand.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 2. Orphan Pip is brought up by older sister Mrs. Joe and her husband Joe Gargery, who become substitute parents after the death of his parents. Using verbal irony and satire, Dickens describes how his Pip and Joe were “brought up by hand” by Pip’s nasty sister. The phrase has a double meaning. Literally it means a child being raised by someone other than its mother, through hand feeding. But it also refers to the heavy-handed Mrs. Joe’s generous use of corporal punishment to control her younger brother and husband. Both are smacked regularly, it seems. Dickens is using hyperbole to mock how Victorian guardians brought up their children with the help of the rod and physical punishment.

“I’d never do it again! I know that. I may truly say I’ve never had this apron of mine off since born you were. It’s bad enough to be a blacksmith’s wife (and him a Gargery) without being your mother.”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 2. Although Mrs. Joe is Pip’s older sister, she resents having to bring young Pip up after the death of their parents and views him as a burden and extra mouth to feed. She also makes an unkind comment about her kindly husband Joe. In it she suggests that she is not happy with her status as a blacksmith’s wife and would like to break out of the limitations of her social class.

Some medical beast had revived Tar-water in those days as a fine medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard; having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness. At the best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to me as a choice restorative, that I was conscious of going about, smelling like a new fence. On this particular evening the urgency of my case demanded a pint of this mixture, which was poured down my throat, for my greater comfort, while Mrs. Joe held my head under her arm, as a boot would be held in a bootjack.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 2. Pip and Joe are force fed nasty tar water medicine by Mrs. Joe after Pip eats his bread too fast. She pours a pint of it down Pip’s throat and makes Joe drink half a pint. We see two similes used in this passage – “smelling like a new fence” and “as a boot would be held in a bootjack.”

“I tell you what, young fellow,” said she, “I didn’t bring you up by hand to badger people’s lives out. It would be blame to me and not praise, if I had. People are put in the Hulks because they murder, and because they rob, and forge, and do all sorts of bad; and they always begin by asking questions. Now, you get along to bed!”

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 2. Mrs. Joe believes in a harsh “children should be seen and not heard” style of parenting that instils fear in a child. Here she takes Pip to task for his inquisitiveness about the Hulks prisoner ships and their occupants. And she warns him that those who ask too many questions could end up with the murderers and robbers on the Hulks.

Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, and some people do the same by their religion.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 4. This is a good example of Pip’s satirical tone when describing how Mrs. Joe manages to make both her cleanliness and religion equally unpleasant. The statement that her cleanliness is more uncomfortable than dirt itself is verbal irony.

I think my sister must have had some general idea that I was a young offender whom an Accoucheur Policeman had taken up (on my birthday) and delivered over to her, to be dealt with according to the outraged majesty of the law. I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends. Even when I was taken to have a new suit of clothes, the tailor had orders to make them like a kind of Reformatory, and on no account to let me have the free use of my limbs.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 4. With irony and humor, the adult Pip recalls his miserable upbringing as a child at the hands of his sister. The wicked wit of Dickens has young Pip describing his home as more like a prison and Mrs. Joe his jailer rather than a caring sister. Brought up to feel guilty from an early age, he is made feel like he is a delinquent or convict. Two similes emphasize how Pip is treated as if his existence was a crime. He speaks of being treated like he insisted on being born and his birth violated everything logical and morally right. And when being fitted for a new suit, he tells us that the tailor was ordered to make it tight-fitting and “like some kind of Reformatory.” In Dickens’s time a reformatory was an institution where juvenile offenders were sent to be reformed. The child Pip saw himself being reared as if he was a young offender.

My sister fixed me with her eye, and said, in a low reproachful voice, “Do you hear that? Be grateful.” “Especially,” said Mr. Pumblechook, “be grateful, boy, to them which brought you up by hand.” Mrs. Hubble shook her head, and contemplating me with a mournful presentiment that I should come to no good, asked, “Why is it that the young are never grateful?” This moral mystery seemed too much for the company until Mr. Hubble tersely solved it by saying, “Naterally wicious.” Everybody then murmured “True!” and looked at me in a particularly unpleasant and personal manner.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 4. While growing up the boy Pip has to sit through the ordeal of a Christmas dinner that is far from full of cheer for him. After grace, he is admonished by his sister Mrs. Joe and her guest Mr. Pumblechook for his lack of gratitude to those providing for him. It goes downhill from there, with another guest Mr. Hubble decrying the young as “naterally wicious” and everyone agreeing with him. The irony is that if anyone is naturally vicious, it is Mrs. Joe, whom we know brings up Pip with the use of the heavy hand and Tickler, her punishment cane. Pip’s awkward and tense home life is on display here.

“Trouble?” echoed my sister; “trouble?” and then entered on a fearful catalogue of all the illnesses I had been guilty of, and all the acts of sleeplessness I had committed, and all the high places I had tumbled from, and all the low places I had tumbled into, and all the injuries I had done myself, and all the times she had wished me in my grave, and I had contumaciously refused to go there.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 4. Pip’s sister Mrs. Joe complains to her friend Mrs. Hubble about Pip. We can see clearly that Pip is a victim of abusive treatment by his older sister and guardian. Far from showing him parental love, Mrs Joe sees him as a burden and wishes him in a grave.

I do not recall that I felt any tenderness of conscience in reference to Mrs. Joe, when the fear of being found out was lifted off me. But I loved Joe, – perhaps for no better reason in those early days than because the dear fellow let me love him, – and, as to him, my inner self was not so easily composed.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 6. Pip recalls how as a boy he loved Joe as being the one person who really cared for him. But he confesses to having no such tender feelings for his mean and cruel sister.

With that, she pounced upon me, like an eagle on a lamb, and my face was squeezed into wooden bowls in sinks, and my head was put under taps of water-butts, and I was soaped, and kneaded, and towelled, and thumped, and harrowed, and rasped, until I really was quite beside myself.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 7. With this animal simile, one can visualize the speed and ferocity with which Mrs. Joe grabs young Pip to roughly wash him. She is the ferocious eagle and he the victim lamb in the operation. We are provided with a snapshot of Pip’s rough growing up.

My sister’s bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little world in which children have their existence whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice. It may be only small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 8. Pip’s harsh upbringing by his abusive sister Mrs. Joe, rather than hardening him has the opposite effect. It makes him more sensitive to the injustices done to people. He speaks about the concept of justice to a young child. Using a vivid metaphor he highlights that to a small child a small injustice feels as great as a large Irish hunter horse.

The remains of my poor sister had been brought round by the kitchen door, and, it being a point of Undertaking ceremony that the six bearers must be stifled and blinded under a horrible black velvet housing with a white border, the whole looked like a blind monster with twelve human legs, shuffling and blundering along, under the guidance of two keepers, – the postboy and his comrade.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 35. Here Dickens uses a rather horrifying image to describe a Victorian funeral procession. The metaphor of a blind monster with twelve human legs is used to depict the pallbearers at the funeral of Mrs. Joe Gargery, Pip’s older sister.
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