MBTI Type: ESFJ

Evelyn is a warm and friendly person, who tries hard to accommodate everyone else in her life. She goes with her husband to the nursing home, each time hoping his aunt won’t hate her guts, then winds up listening to Ninny tell her story and in turn, talking about her own life. She is emotional and easily offended or insulted, but tries not to cause any trouble for anyone else (running out of a weird meeting, instead of causing a scene). Evelyn tries to communicate her needs to her husband, but also makes space for him, and winds up frustrated; but at the end of the film, she has learned to assert herself (she is taking in Ninny and her husband can just “get used to the idea”). She has a very Si method of dealing with the world – Evelyn learns from other people and their experiences and applies their advice and experiences to her own life, to make big changes. She draws off the courage of the previous generation to become more self-confident, to tear out walls, to exercise, and take charge of her life rather than be passive, but she still manages to be a wife in the process, by providing her husband meals before she rushes out the door. Her lower Ne searches for any new idea that might be interesting or add something to her experience—she loves to hear stories about Idgie and Ruth and think about what might have happened to them; she wants to know the answer and who murdered Ruth’s husband. She changes her mind from one day to the next (she needs more light in her living room, so she rips out a wall; then puts it back a week later, after she decides to bring Ninny home to live with them). Evelyn shows inferior Ti in asking “why are you so mean?!” when someone is rude to her in the parking lot. She can’t understand why people are cruel to each other, and that’s the only thing she can think to ask when she rushes out to confront him for calling her fat.

Enneagram: 9w1

Evelyn has grown used to taking up no space in her home, and not asserting herself; she hates that her husband ignores her all the time and just watches sports, but can’t make him turn off the television and pay attention to her. She normally would allow people to run over her, in a proverbial sense, until she gets good and mad and takes back some of her power, with a devil may care attitude (when two girls steal her parking spot after she has circled the parking lot waiting for a spot for ages, she rams her station wagon repeatedly into their car, and then laughs about it as she leaves). She has been inert much of her life, until inspired by stories of Idgie and Ruth, she decides to take the initiative and do things for herself—losing weight, getting a job with Mary Kay cosmetics, tearing out a wall in her house, and bringing Ninny into it. She does moralize at and lecture people sometimes with her 1 wing, telling off people who get in her way, but then backing down if it starts a real fight. And she has a classic 9 way of coping with stress—she comfort-eats, which causes her to gain weight.

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