“When I offered to your sister to keep company, and to be asked in church at such times as she was willing and ready to come to the forge, I said to her, ‘And bring the poor little child. God bless the poor little child,’ I said to your sister, ‘there’s room for him at the forge!'”
– Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, Chapter 7. Rather than leave Pip to survive on his own as an orphan, the kind-hearted Joe generously takes him into his home. There is a biblical allusion here, as Joe’s words echo Luke 2:7 – “There was no room for them in the inn.” While Mary and Joseph were turned away when they sought for shelter before the birth of Jesus, Joe doesn’t turn the orphan Pip away but welcomes him into his life. He becomes a true father figure to the boy.