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"At such times as your sister is on the ram-page, Pip."
John McLenan
15 December 1860
11.3 cm high by 8.9 cm wide (4 ½ by 3 ½ inches)
Dickens's Great Expectations,
Harper's Weekly 4 (15 December 1860): 789.
Plate 7 (facing p. 44) in the T. B. Peterson single-volume edition of 1861.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
He had taken up the poker again; without which, I doubt if he could have proceeded in his demonstration.
“Your sister is given to government.”
“Given to government, Joe?” I was startled, for I had some shadowy idea (and I am afraid I must add, hope) that Joe had divorced her in a favor of the Lords of the Admiralty, or Treasury.
“Given to government,” said Joe. “Which I meantersay the government of you and myself.”
“Oh!”
“And she an’t over partial to having scholars on the premises,” Joe continued, “and in partickler would not be over partial to my being a scholar, for fear as I might rise. Like a sort of rebel, don’t you see?”I was going to retort with an inquiry, and had got as far as “Why —” when Joe stopped me.
“Stay a bit. I know what you’re a-going to say, Pip; stay a bit! I don’t deny that your sister comes the Mo-gul over us, now and again. I don’t deny that she do throw us back-falls, and that she do drop down upon us heavy. At such times as when your sister is on the Ram-page, Pip,” Joe sank his voice to a whisper and glanced at the door, “candour compels fur to admit that she is a Buster.” [Chapter VII, 789-790]
At the time, adult literacy was a major social as well as an educational and commercial concern in both Great Britain and America. The scene which considers Joe's early life and his illiteracy should be viewed against the backdrop of educational reform in the 1860s, although such governmental initiatives as The Elementary Education Act of England and Wales (1870) and the founding of the United States Office of Education (1869) were still almost a decade away. The issue of general education was especially pressing across the Atlantic since America had to integrate foreign-language speakers linguistically, socially, and politically. Consequently, it is surprising that so few of Dickens's illustrators have focussed on Joe's illiteracy, and his learning his letters second-hand through his young brother-in-law, Pip. Here, in fact, McLenan focuses on the mutual emotional support of the child-like brother-in-law and the inquisitive seven-year-old rather than on Pip's teaching Joe his letters. Joe explains why, as a result of an abusive father, he never received any schooling when he was a boy.
Left: Joe and Mrs. Gargery (1867), from the Diamond Edition by Sol Eytinge, Jr. Centre: In the British Household Edition, F. A. Fraser in the realistic style of the Sixties emphasizes the close relationship of the child-like Joe and seven-year-old his brother-in-law, fellow sufferers of Mrs. Joe's domestic tyranny in "Why, here's a J," said Joe, "and a O equal to anythink!" (1876). Right: Harry Furniss's 1910 lithographic depiction of Joe's writing his own note home in Ch. 57 as a result of Pip's earlier sharing his dame school education: Joe indites a note to Biddy, in the Charles Dickens Library Edition, Vol. 14.
Left: F. O. C. Darley in his 1888 character study captures something of this fireside intimacy that Joe and Pip share in Joe Gargery and Pip. Right: F. W. Pailthorpe sets the working-class scene at the local public house that implies Pip's common origins and tastes: A Stranger at The Three Jolly Bargemen (1885).
Allingham, Philip V. "The Illustrations for Great Expectations in Harper's Weekly (1860-61) and in the Illustrated Library Edition (1862) — 'Reading by the Light of Illustration'." Dickens Studies Annual, Vol. 40 (2009): 113-169.
Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Il. John McLenan. Vol. IV.
______. ("Boz."). Great Expectations. With thirty-four illustrations from original designs by John McLenan. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson (by agreement with Harper & Bros., New York), 1861.
______. Great Expectations. Volume 6 of the Household Edition. Illustrated by F. A. Fraser. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876.
Paroissien, David. The Companion to "Great Expectations." Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000.
Created 20 November 2007 Last updated 13 November 2021