He took us home and hammered us. Which, you see, … were a drawback on my learning.

Background.

• ‘He took us home and hammered us. Which, you see, … were a drawback on my learning‘ is a quotation from Great Expectations (Chapter 7).

• Great Expectations is Charles Dickens‘s thirteenth novel first published in All the Year Round, from December 1860 to August 1861. Set at the turn of the nineteenth century, the story depicts the personal growth and development of an orphan boy Philip Pirrip, nicknamed Pip.

Context.

Quotation said by the character Joe Gargery, who is explaining to Pip that he didn’t receive an education during his childhood because of domestic violence in his home environment.

Like Joe, his father was a blacksmith by trade. Pip asks Joe ‘why didn’t you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as me?‘, to which he replies by talking about his abusive father, who would beat his wife and Joe when he was drunk, describing ‘when he were overtook with drink, he hammered away at my mother, most onmerciful … and he hammered at me with a wigor only to be equalled by the wigor with which he didn’t hammer at his anwil. The deliberate misspelling of words such as onmerciful [unmerciful], wigor [vigour] and anwil [anvil] in the passage emphasise Joe’s lack of education.

Joe then goes on to tell Pip that his mother did make several attempts to leave his father, and when this happened she would put him into a school. But her father would find them both and force them to return home, saying ‘and then he took us home and hammered us. Which, you see, Pip, were a drawback on my learning‘.

Source.

Taken from the following passage in Chapter 7 of Great Expectations:

“On-common. Give me,” said Joe, “a good book, or a good newspaper, and sit me down afore a good fire, and I ask no better. Lord!” he continued, after rubbing his knees a little, “when you do come to a J and a O, and says you, ‘Here, at last, is a J-O, Joe,’ how interesting reading is!”

I derived from this, that Joe’s education, like Steam, was yet in its infancy. Pursuing the subject, I inquired,—

“Didn’t you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as me?”

“No, Pip.”

“Why didn’t you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as me?”

“Well, Pip,” said Joe, taking up the poker, and settling himself to his usual occupation when he was thoughtful, of slowly raking the fire between the lower bars; “I’ll tell you. My father, Pip, he were given to drink, and when he were overtook with drink, he hammered away at my mother, most onmerciful. It were a’most the only hammering he did, indeed, ‘xcepting at myself. And he hammered at me with a wigor only to be equalled by the wigor with which he didn’t hammer at his anwil.—You’re a listening and understanding, Pip?”

“Yes, Joe.”

“‘Consequence, my mother and me we ran away from my father several times; and then my mother she’d go out to work, and she’d say, “Joe,” she’d say, “now, please God, you shall have some schooling, child,” and she’d put me to school. But my father were that good in his hart that he couldn’t abear to be without us. So, he’d come with a most tremenjous crowd and make such a row at the doors of the houses where we was, that they used to be obligated to have no more to do with us and to give us up to him. And then he took us home and hammered us. Which, you see, Pip,” said Joe, pausing in his meditative raking of the fire, and looking at me, “were a drawback on my learning.”

“Certainly, poor Joe!”

“Though mind you, Pip,” said Joe, with a judicial touch or two of the poker on the top bar, “rendering unto all their doo, and maintaining equal justice betwixt man and man, my father were that good in his hart, don’t you see?”

I didn’t see; but I didn’t say so.

Characters.

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