Bringing up a Child by Hand: An Examination of Mrs. Joe Gargery’s Ways in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations

Abstract

This article examines Mrs. Joe Gargery’s ways of bringing up her younger brother in Charles Dickens’s novel. Mrs. Joe Gargery’s ways of bringing up Little Pip in Dickens’s Great Expectations, are not indeed those which could be expected from a woman, even less from an elder sister. In fact, her conduct, habits, or attitudes towards either her brother or her husband led the Victorian novelist to the use of the phrase ‘by hand’ which appears seventeen times throughout the novel, fourteen of which are related to her character traits in raising her brother. These traits of hers are mostly negative and place her side by side with such other characters as Shakespeare’s Queen Margaret in Henry VI and Dickens’s Miss Sally Brass in The Old Curiosity Shop to quote only these two. For this study, since it examines Mrs. Joe Gargery’s ways, there is recourse to the formalistic approach, especially the figures of speech used by the author, as all the interpretations it seeks to bring are supported by evidence found in the text.