Biddy, it shall rest with you to say whether I shall work at the forge with Joe, or whether I shall try for any different occupation down in this country, or whether we shall go away to a distant place where an opportunity awaits me…And now, dear Biddy, if you can tell me that you will go through the world with me, you will surely make it a better world for me, and me a better man for it, and I will try hard to make it a better world for you.
– Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, Chapter 57. Pip decides to return to Joe’s forge and ask Biddy to marry him so she may guide him with her goodness. He eventually realizes that he and Biddy are a better match than he and Estella ever were. In this passage the reader is told what Pip plans to say to Biddy when they meet. Pip’s conversion is rather ironic, since earlier in the novel he spurned life with Joe in the forge to pursue being a “gentleman” and he abandoned his loving friend Biddy for Estella. There is also a further hidden irony, as we discover in the next chapter. When Pip returns to his village roots three days later he is shocked to find that Biddy and Joe were married that morning. He saw Biddy’s true value too late.