I Have Been Bent And Broken

Spoken by Estella to Pip in the final chapter (Chapter 59) of Great Expectations (1861), at the ruins of Satis House after eleven years apart. Estella's marriage to the brutal Bentley Drummle has broken her coldness and taught her compassion — an ironic reversal of Miss Havisham's plan to use her as an instrument of revenge. The alliterative "bent and broken" carries a double weight: metaphorical transformation of character and a veiled acknowledgment of physical abuse, making this one of the novel's most quietly devastating lines.