MBTI Type: ISFJ

Laura goes through a period of adjustment when she leaves home and goes to live in Candleford with her mother’s cousin. She quickly adapts to the post office, but also misses the familiarity of home. She is attentive to the details of her job and eager to learn, so she can take on more responsibility (her own mail route). Laura keeps meticulous journals, detailing all of her daily activities, the people she meets, and the thoughts that cross her mind. Her voice-over recalls the incidents of her youth and past, which are all subjective and based on her own memories and interpretations. Though she does sense things between other people, Laura primarily focuses her imagination on her romantic, poetic, and literary pursuits. She reads lots of books to gather ideas for her own writing, and she has a hint of a spiritual side to her in her fascination with ghost stories and old legends. But she does not particularly embrace change, particularly all at once. She is a very warm and affirming girl, eager to please and upset if she has hurt anyone’s feelings. Laura likes to explain her actions in order to justify them and be understood by others. She is sometimes careless with her emotions, leading her mother to have her feelings hurt over Laura’s open admiration for Dorcas. Laura represses some of her feelings, but if she has a strong opinion, is not afraid to voice it, particularly if she feels slighted or angry. She often takes up the moral causes of her neighbors and friends, and convinces others to fight for them alongside her (getting her father to stand up for Alf’s mother in court). Her interest in how things work causes her to ask lots of questions. Laura is curious about people and analyzes them in order to better understand them, what they need from her, and in many instances, to decide what to do in order to help them out of an unfortunate situation. She enjoys organizing her thoughts and uses her words sparingly, in her speech and her writing pursuits.

Enneagram: 1w2 sp/so

Laura at her worst can be judgmental and condescending, overly uppity and a goody-two-shoes who thinks moralizing at her family and friends is the right thing to do. At her best, she is a devoted hard-worker, concerned with appearing to be appropriate, and somewhat stifled by her own need to be appropriate, which causes trouble when a boy accuses her of being ‘too buttoned up’ for her own good. She can be highly restrained, and have a critical attitude of misbehavior, while secretly being envious that she can’t go out with Minnie and the boys and have a good time. (She has to work.) Laura is terrified whenever she makes a mistake that she is going to get fired. Her 2 wing is motivated toward helping her friends and family out of a desire to be seen as useful. She’s a hard worker, but also interfering at times – seeing it as her duty to guard Alf and prevent him from having his heart broken by a pretty girl, telling Sir Timothy of her employer’s plans to sell the Post Office, etc. She is so eager to please, she can be persuaded to give in (Daniel manipulates her into letting him read her journals, by saying it would “help” him write his article). Laura moves toward the young men in her life, desirous of love, but can also be jealous and envious of others’ happiness.