On Mrs. Joe...

17 February 2019: "It was the first time that a grave had opened in my road of life, and the gap it made in the smooth ground was wonderful. The figure of my sister in her chair by the kitchen fire, haunted me night and day. That the place could possibly be, without her, was something my mind seemed unable to compass; and whereas she had seldom or never been in my thoughts of late, I had now the strangest ideas that she was coming towards me in the street, or that she would presently knock at the door. In my rooms too, with which she had never been at all associated, there was at once the blankness of death and a perpetual suggestion of the sound of her voice or the turn of her face or figure, as if she were still alive and had been often there....Whatever my fortunes might have been, I could scarcely have recalled my sister with much tenderness. But I suppose there is a shock of regret which may exist without much tenderness." --Pip, after his sister's death, in Great Expectations

On yet another turn through Great Expectations for me, this time for ENGL 341, the book continues to give me new gems to focus on. Pip's inability to imagine a world without his sister--such a dominant figure in his life--is well-rendered, right down to his seemingly unanticipated feeling of regret even though she was never warm towards him. Loss is complex, especially when the family member is someone like Mrs. Joe.