“I’ll tell you,” said she, in the same hurried passionate whisper, “what real love is. It is blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter – as I did!”
– Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, Chapter 29. Miss Havisham’s definition of real love, as told to Pip, is ironically a perversion of what love really is. Her bitterness and twisted view of love results from her own heartbreak on being let down by her fiancé and con artist Compeyson.