How Dickens presents Joe and Biddy, and how the character develops across the text: the loyal, forgiving blacksmith and the clever, honest village girl, whom Pip leaves behind and comes back to.
The key quotations for this character and how to analyse them, with the context that shapes them.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish, dear fellow', 'a sort of Hercules in strength, and also in weakness', 'my father were that good in his hart', 'if you think as Money can make compensation to me for the loss of the little child', 'You won't find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my hand', 'Ever the best of friends; ain't us, Pip?', 'Biddy was never insulting, or capricious', 'to learn everything that I learn, and always to keep up with me', 'Don't you think you are happier as you are?', 'Are you quite sure, then, that you WILL come to see him often?', 'And, dear Joe, you have the best wife in the whole world'.
Joe's dialect and Biddy's self-taught learning, and how Dickens shows that goodness does not depend on class or education.
OCR's question on this novel is one essay, from a choice of two, for 40 marks: an extract-based question on the printed extract and the novel elsewhere, or a discursive question on a view of the novel, using at least two moments. Response (AO1) and language, form and structure (AO2) carry the most weight and equal weight, context (AO3) counts when it is relevant to the question, and 4 marks are for vocabulary, sentence structures, spelling and punctuation (AO4). An extract-based answer that never leaves the extract, or a discursive answer built on one moment, cannot go above Level 3. Each worked paragraph and exam tip is labelled with the question it is for.
