Great Expectations
Joe Gargery
Pip's brother-in-law
The village blacksmith, a gentle giant who loves Pip without conditions and never stops being kind.
Joe is a big, patient, honest man who works the forge in the marshes. He is married to Pip's harsh older sister, and he takes the blows of that household without complaint. With Pip, he is a fellow sufferer and a friend. He sits with the boy at the table and urges him to eat his bread and butter.
Joe has little schooling, but he has a clear sense of right and wrong. He tells Pip that lies are lies and that they are no way out of being common. He loves Pip too much to stand in his way when the chance to be a gentleman comes, and he sets a clear limit: money cannot make up for the loss of the boy.
“If you think as money can make up to me for the loss of the boy, you don't know Joe Gargery!”
In the story
Contains spoilers.
Joe mends the soldiers' handcuffs during the marsh hunt, stands up to Orlick for his wife's honor, and tells Jaggers that Pip may go free without a penny. When he visits Pip in London he feels out of place, but his parting words about life being made of partings welded together stay with Pip.
When Pip is ill and in debt, Joe comes to his bedside, nurses him, and pays the bills before slipping away with a letter. Later Joe marries Biddy. Pip arrives on their wedding day and gives them his blessing. Eleven years on, Joe sits by the fire with their little boy, named Pip.
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