Pip's Sister (Mrs. Joe Gargery)

Pip (Philip Pirrip)'s elder sister is a woman hardened by poverty and domestic responsibility, who raised her orphaned brother "by hand" with a severity that reflects both the harshness of their circumstances and her own limited emotional capacity for gentleness. She rules her household with an iron discipline, wielding the "Tickler" (a cane or strap) as her instrument of correction and using moral language to justify her punishments. Though not without dignity and strength, she is a figure of stern authority rather than maternal warmth, and Pip (Philip Pirrip)'s childhood memories of her are tinged with fear and resentment rather than affection.