She hung upon Estella’s beauty, hung upon her words, hung upon her gestures, and sat mumbling her own trembling fingers while she looked at her, as though she were devouring the beautiful creature she had reared.
– Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, Chapter 38. In Pip’s observation we see how Miss Havisham regards her daughter not as a person, but an object of beauty to be used and controlled. Note the use of the grotesque, hyperbolic, metaphorical image of Miss Havisham “devouring” Estella. She is not literally eating her daughter. But this portrays her as a possessive, controlling and obsessive parent, who sees herself as having ownership of Estella. She is the hungry animal while Estella is the food in her mad quest to use her daughter’s beauty to wreak revenge on men.