Miss Havisham

My entire plan, put on hold, if not destroyed! I thought Estella and I were on the same terms, but clearly I am boring and unappealing to her. How unbelievable: I raised her, I taught her everything, I had a plan for her, I practically made her! And how does she repay her sweet old, kind, caring adopted mother: she turns away and puts to rest everything I had been raising her on! The nerve, the nerve! How could she do this to me, me! How can she not love me when I did everything for her; the lesson of not loving others was instilled but I did not think that rule applied to me. Why would she want a different lifestyle, especially when I gave her all the knowledge and lessons she ever had?

" 'Mother by adoption,' retorted Estella, never departing from the easy grace of her attitude, never raising her voice as the other did, never yielding either to anger or tenderness, 'Mother by adoption, I have said that I owe everything to you. All I possess is freely yours. All that you have given me, is at your command to have again. Beyond that, I have nothing. And if you ask me to give you what you never gave me, my gratitude and duty cannot do impossibilities.' " (324)

" 'Or,' said Estella, '-which is a nearer case-if you had taught her, from the dawn of her intelligence, with your utmost energy and might, that there was such a thing as daylight, but that it was made to be her enemy and destroyer, and she must always turn against it, for it had blighted you and would else blight her; if you had done this, and then, for a purpose, had wanted her to take naturally to the daylight and she could not do it, you would have been disappointed and angry?'
Miss Havisham sat listening (or it seemed so, for I could not see her face), but still made no answer.
'So,' said Estella, 'I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.' " (326)