Dickens writes a description of Mrs. Joe, which is equally unfavourable:
‘My sister, Mrs. Joe, with black hair and eyes, had such a prevailing redness of the skin, that I sometimes used to wonder whether she washed herself with a nutmeg – grater instead of soap’
With this as a first description, we automatically think of Mrs. Joe as a bad tempered and disagreeable woman. The fact that she is also a caricature created by Dickens causes her to be able to be seen more vividly by the reader and in this way, her personality is also enforced onto the reader vigorously.
Dickens describes many of Mrs. Joe’s features adversely. These small details give us deep insights into her personality:
‘…having such a square impregnable bib in front, that was stuck full of pins and needles.’
Mrs Joe’s bib is described as ‘impregnable’ and stuck full of ‘pins and needles’. We get the impression that Mrs. Joe is hard to approach, she is once again described as masculine, which intimidates the reader, and she feels quite frightening.
Mrs. Joe regularly complains about being married to Joe and bringing up Pip alone:
‘It’s bad enough to be a blacksmith’s wife (and him a Gargery) without being your mother.’
She regularly insults Joe, which to the reader seems very unfair, as Joe is described by Dickens as such a nice, good-natured man. The reader gains adverse opinions of her since she is being so mean to a character, which Dickens creates as one of the most decent people and most liked by the reader in the whole novel.
Mrs. Joe’s actions are described critically as well:
‘First, with her left hand she jammed the loaf hard and fast against her bib where it sometimes got a pin into it and sometimes a needle…’
The way in which she cuts the bread is described with words such as ‘jammed’ and ‘hard and fast’. These guttural, monosyllabic words once again enforce this intimidating, masculine impression upon the reader.
Her ways in thinking cause the reader to view her in an adverse way:
‘….having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness’
The fact that Mrs. Joe thinks that the medicine must be very good for Pip as it is so nasty gives us an insight into the way in which Mrs. Joe thinks.
Mrs. Joe is not always so mean according to Pip. When, with other people, Mrs. Joe is supposed to be very gracious:
‘My sister was uncommonly lively on the present occasion, and indeed was generally more gracious in the society of Mrs. Hubble than in other company.’
When the reader sees that she is able to be nice and the contrast between these two different personalities, they gain a more unfavourable impression of her and feel as is she is fake. The contrast enforces the reader’s dislike for her more vigorously.
When she is attacked, Mrs. Joe suffers a lot:
‘Her sight was disturbed…her hearing was greatly impaired; her memory also; and her speech was unintelligible’
This description of her causes the reader to feel sorry for Mrs. Joe. Dickens uses words such as ‘disturbed’ and ‘impaired’ to lay stress on her poor condition. In this way, he elicits sympathy for Mrs. Joe
When Mrs. Joe dies, Pip feels many things, which he has never felt about Mrs. Joe. He feels anger towards the attacker and calls her, ‘my poor sister’. Since Pip says this, the reader feels it strongly as we are greatly influenced by the emotions of the narrator, Pip.
Dickens uses imagery to describe the burial of Mrs. Joe:
‘And there, my sister was laid quietly in the earth while the larks sang high above it and the light wind strewed it with beautiful shadows of clods and trees.’
Dickens describes the larks singing and a light wind casting beautiful shadows over her, which gives us a beautiful picture of the burial. These are the last words we hear of her and they create a big impact on the reader as we feel very sorry for her.
At the beginning of the book, Mrs. Joe is an active character that makes Pip miserable and as we see the novel through Pip’s eyes, the cruelty inflicted upon him by Mrs. Joe is seen by the reader to be very vivid. When Mrs. Joe is attacked, Pip’s views of her change and so do the opinions of the readers. They feel sympathetic towards her.
