7 uses
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Definition
deviation from what is considered reasonable, proper, or good
- At this moment she felt angry with the perverse Sir James.Book 1 — Miss Brooke (11% in)
- Nevertheless, while Sir James said to himself that he had completely resigned her, since with the perversity of a Desdemona she had not affected a proposed match that was clearly suitable and according to nature; he could not yet be quite passive under the idea of her engagement to Mr. Casaubon.Book 1 — Miss Brooke (53% in)
- It was desirable that chaplaincies of this kind should be entered on with a fervent intention: they were peculiar opportunities for spiritual influence; and while it was good that a salary should be allotted, there was the more need for scrupulous watching lest the office should be perverted into a mere question of salary.Book 2 — Old and Young (61% in)
- "I have really sometimes been a perverse fellow," he went on, "but I will never again, if I can help it, do or say what you would disapprove."Book 4 — Three Love Problems (43% in)
- Mr. Farebrother thought he could account for this speech, in striking contrast with Lydgate's former way of talking, as the perversity which will often spring from the moodiness of a man ill at ease in his affairs.Book 7 — Two Temptations (7% in)
- The hard and contemptuous words which had fallen from her husband in his anger had deeply offended that vanity which he had at first called into active enjoyment; and what she regarded as his perverse way of looking at things, kept up a secret repulsion, which made her receive all his tenderness as a poor substitute for the happiness he had failed to give her.Book 8 — Sunset and Sunrise (20% in)
- Even Tertius, that most perverse of men, was always subdued in the long-run: events had been obstinate, but still Rosamond would have said now, as she did before her marriage, that she never gave up what she had set her mind on.Book 8 — Sunset and Sunrise (47% in)
There are no more uses of "perverse" in Middlemarch.
Typical Usage
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