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Sarah Pocket Quotes

A little dry, brown, corrugated old woman, with a small face that might have been made of walnut-shells, and a large mouth like a cat’s without the whiskers.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 11. Dickens satirizes the parasitic relatives of Miss Havisham with this description of Sarah Pocket. An uncomplimentary simile compares her mouth to that of a whiskerless cat.

Sarah Pocket came to the gate, and positively reeled back when she saw me so changed; her walnut-shell countenance likewise turned from brown to green and yellow.

– Charles Dickens

Great Expectations, Chapter 19. The metaphor of a “walnut-shell” to represent Sarah Pocket’s face is continuously used by Pip in the novel. The metaphorical language continues here with a description of how Sarah’s face color turns from brown to green to yellow, which it literally cannot do. This is meant to show how shocked her facial expression is.
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