It has been my aim to make the character of "Magdalen," which personifies this struggle, a pathetic character even in its
perversity and its error; and I have tried hard to attain this result by the least obtrusive and the least artificial of all means -- by a resolute adherence throughout to the truth as it is in Nature.
"While I stood stupefied with horror by this ghastly spectacle and still holding open the door, by some unaccountable
perversity my attention was diverted from the shocking scene and concerned itself with trifles and details.
"The matter begins and ends with the boy's own
perversity and folly.
Thither he directed his steps,--running sometimes, and sometimes, with a strange
perversity, loitering at a snail's pace, or stopping altogether and idly breaking the hedges with a stick.
Furious at his
perversity, and especially indignant that he professed to be ignorant of my sex, I retorted in no measured terms, "Besotted Being!
There was a contained, prophetic energy in his utterances, even on the slightest affairs; he SAW the damned thing; if you did not, it must be from
perversity of will; and this sent the blood to his head.
So, I suppose, this obstinacy and
perversity were pleasanter to them than any advantage....
I could not help it: there was a poison in my veins that made me all ingratitude and
perversity. The world welcomed me back, and I returned the compliment by sulking like the recaptured runaway I was at heart.
The time has passed when he was an object of ridicule, and it is no longer a mark of eccentricity to defend or of
perversity to extol him.
The best of us have a spice of
perversity in us, especially when we are young and in love.
And then the beauty of it - I mean of my
perversity, of my refusal to agree to a 'deal' - is just in the total absence of a reason.
She sighed over the
perversity of things in general, and croaked a little over her trials in particular, but on the whole got over her loss better than she expected, for soon she had other sorrows beside her own to comfort, and such work does a body more good than floods of regretful tears, or hours of sentimental lamentation.