“Look at her so hard and thankless, on the hearth where she was reared! Where I took her into this wretched breast when it was first bleeding from its stabs, and where I have lavished years of tenderness upon her!”
“At least I was no party to the compact,” said Estella, “for if I could walk and speak, when it was made, it was as much as I could do. But what would you have? You have been very good to me, and I owe everything to you. What would you have?”
“Love,” replied the other.
“You have it.”
“I have not,” said Miss Havisham.
– Charles Dickens
Great Expectations, Chapter 38. Miss Havisham bitterly complains about being unloved by Estella. Her daughter should be grateful that she adopted her as a child at a time when her own heart was broken, she snaps. In a metaphor describing her pain of being jilted, Miss Havisham says that she took Estella “into this wretched breast when it was first bleeding from its stabs.” But Estella’s cold response is to say that she didn’t ask to be adopted and raised by Miss Havisham.