wilfulness

wilful +‎ -ness

wilfulness (usually uncountable, plural wilfulnesses)

1. (British spelling) The state or condition of being wilful; stubbornness.
   • 1859, Harriet Beecher Stowe, “The Practical Test”, in The Minister’s Wooing, New York, N.Y.: Derby and Jackson, […], →OCLC, page 177:

     “I want ye all to know,” she said, with a clearing-up snuff, “dat it’s my will an’ pleasure to go right on doin’ my work jes’ de same; an’, Missis, please, I’ll allers put three eggs in de crullers, now; an’ I won’t turn de wash-basin down in de sink, but hang it jam-up on de nail; an’ I won’t pick up chips in a milk-pan, ef I’m in ever so big a hurry;—I’ll do eberyting jes’ as ye tells me. Now you try me an’ see ef I won’t!” / Candace here alluded to some of the little private wilfulnesses which she had always obstinately cherished as reserved rights, in pursuing domestic matters with her mistress.

   • 1885, George Meredith, “An Exhibition of Some Champions of the Stricken Lady”, in Diana of the Crossways […], volume III, London: Chapman and Hall […], pages 176–177:

     Now Redworth believed in the soul of Diana. For him it burned, and it was a celestial radiance about her, unquenched by her shifting fortunes, her wilfulnesses and, it might be, errors.

   • 1897 January–March, Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, New York, N.Y., London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons; The Knickerbocker Press, published 1905, pages 81–82:

     If ever I write again, in the sense of producing artistic work, there are just two subjects on which and through which I desire to express myself: one is “Christ as the precursor of the romantic movement in life”: the other is “The artistic life considered in its relation to conduct.” The first is, of course, intensely fascinating, for I see in Christ not merely the essentials of the supreme romantic type, but all the accidents, the wilfulnesses even, of the romantic temperament also.

• willfulness (US)