Mrs. Joe’s abusiveness and lack of warmth are evident with such comments as: “Perhaps if I warn’t a blacksmith’s wife, and . . . a slave with her apron never off,” and her warm Christmas greeting to Pip: “And where the deuce ha’ you been?”
Child abuse and religion were often targets of Dickens satire. The adults’ attack on Pip about the young never being grateful degenerates into the ridiculous when Mr. Wopsle and Pumblechook turn a conversation about pigs into a Sunday sermon and moral lecture for the young. The satire continues as Pumblechook takes great delight in describing what a butcher would do if Pip were a pig, and then telling Pip how lucky he is to be with them.
Humor and sarcasm show in some of the holiday interactions, as well. Pip relates how Uncle Pumblechook is Joe’s uncle, but Mrs. Joe appropriates him, and every Christmas when Pumblechook brings the same two bottles of wine to Mrs. Joe, she responds with the same words: “Oh Un — cle Pum — ble — chook! This IS kind!” Dickens’ character descriptions are equally sarcastic: “Uncle Pumblechook: a large hard-breathing middle-aged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright on his head, so that he looked as if he had just been all but choked, and had that moment come to.”
