On whom should I fling myself away?

[kev67]

In chapter 44, when Pip is pleading with Estella not to marry Bentley Drummle, Pip says;

"Your own act, Estella, to fling yourself away upon a brute?"

and Estella replies:

"On whom should I fling myself away?" she retorted, with a smile. "Should I fling myself away upon the man who would the soonest feel (if people do feel such things) that I took nothing to him? There! It is done. I shall do well enough, and so will my husband. As to leading me into what you call this fatal step, Miss Havisham would have had me wait, and not marry yet; but I am tired of the life I have led, which has very few charms for me, and I am willing enough to change it. Say no more. We shall never understand each other."


What does she mean when she says, "Should I fling myself away upon the man who would the soonest feel that I took nothing to him?"

[kev67]

To answer my own question, maybe she has twigged that Pip never seems to be content with her. Pip says that in all the time he spent with her in Richmond, he never had a moment's happiness. On the rare occasions she lets him kiss her, he finds her cold. Even when she's being friendly to him, he thinks she's being either manipulating, condescending or familiar.

[kev67]

I suppose it might also mean that any of Estella's suitors would eventually discover, if she married him, that she did not love him. However Pip would have a head start because she had not tried to deceive and entrap him. Bentley Drummle, being a stupid brute, would probably take longer than most.