Mrs. Joe in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations

Mrs. Joe in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations

Dickens uses Mrs. Joe's devilish appearance and controlling behaviour

to compare to Joe's angelic looks and kindhearted deeds in the early

part of the novel. Pip and Joe both fear Mrs. Joe because of her

violent actions, this brings them closer together which is significant

throughout the book. She is also the only female role model Pip has

early on in life, twisting his vision of the perfect woman later on.

Our first impressions of Mrs. Joe's are of a cold and domineering

woman because of the way Dickens describes her appearance. The colours

used to portray Mrs. Joe are fairly daunting:

"black hair and eyes redness of skin,"

The "black" is quite a morbid colour suggesting she is moody and

short-tempered. Her skin put together with her hair makes me imagine

her to be some sort of demon who is torturing Pip and Joe.

In comparison the colours used to describe Joe are mild:

"fair undecided blue mixed with their own whites."

The colours are calm and pale implying that Joe is a calm and gentle

man.

Mrs. Joe also appears somewhat comical:

"had such a prevailing redness of skin, that I sometimes used to

wonder whether it were possible she washed herself with a

nutmeg-grater"

Although the image is amusing, it still shows Mrs. Joe as being

powerful and unbreakable. If she "washed herself with a nutmeg-grater"

then she might be more resilient than normal people, making her seem

more demon-like.

It also seems as if she is unapproachable from Dickens's choice of

language:

""a square impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and

needles"

She seems like a fortress that cannot be invaded since she has

protection in the form of "...

... middle of paper ...

...our first game was out 'And what coarse hands he has! And what

thick boots!' "

Pip takes these comments to heart; perhaps if Mrs. Joe had not been so

cruel to him then he would have ignored Estella. Had he not listened

to Estella, he would not have been so ashamed of himself and might not

have wanted to go to London and ruined his life. Mrs. Joe is the root

of all the bad that happens to Pip.

The reason that Mrs. Joe, Estella and most of the women in "Great

Expectations" are depicted as being malicious and cruel is perhaps

because Dickens might have had bad experiences with women in his life.

Mrs. Joe introduces violence and injustice to Pip at an early age,

which ties in with Magwitch, who is another parental figure later on

in the novel. The bond formed between Pip and Joe because of Mrs. Joe

is extremely important to both of them later in the book.