Mrs. Joe Gargery, the blacksmith’s first wife; a “rampageous woman,” always “on the ram-page.” By no means good-looking was Mrs. Joe, with her black hair, and fierce eyes, and prevailing redness of skin, looking as if “she scrubbed herself with a nutmeggrater instead of soap and flannel.” She “was tall and bony, and wore a coarse apron fastened over her figure behind with two loops, and having a square bib in front, stuck full of needles and pins.” She brought up Pip, but made his home as wretched as she could, always keeping a rod called “Tickler” ready for immediate use. Mrs. Joe was a very clean woman, and cleanliness is next to godliness; but Mrs. Joe had the art of making her cleanliness as disagreeable to every one as many people do their godliness. She died after a long illness.—Dickens: Great Expectations (1860).
Joe Miller. (See Jests; Miller.)
Joe Willet. (See under Willet.)
Johannes Agricola, a German reformer of the sixteenth century, and alleged founder of the sect of Antinomians. Browning has a poem so called.