All 3 Uses of
perverse
in
Jane Eyre
- that kindly conversation could not be sustained between us, because whatever topic I started, immediately received from her a turn at once coarse and trite, perverse and imbecile — when I perceived that I should never have a quiet or settled household, because no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her violent and unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory, exacting orders — even then I restrained myself: I eschewed upbraiding, I curtailed remonstrance;†
p. 353.2
- And what a distortion in your judgment, what a perversity in your ideas, is proved by your conduct!†
p. 364.9 *
- As I walked by his side homeward, I read well in his iron silence all he felt towards me: the disappointment of an austere and despotic nature, which has met resistance where it expected submission — the disapprobation of a cool, inflexible judgment, which has detected in another feelings and views in which it has no power to sympathise: in short, as a man, he would have wished to coerce me into obedience: it was only as a sincere Christian he bore so patiently with my perversity, and allowed so long a space for reflection and repentance.†
p. 472.3
Definition:
not what is expected, or considered proper
or: having the opposite effect of what is desired
or: having the opposite effect of what is desired