MBTI Type: ESTJ

Anna likes to step into a situation and take control over it; she insists the king keep his promise of giving her a house outside the palace. She organizes the children and her teaching methods without hesitation. Rather than get permission first, when she sees a woman chained up and mistreated, she frees her and then pays for her freedom. Her tendency to strong-arm, take action for immediate results, and say whatever she is thinking sometimes causes a backlash.  Though intensely compassionate and angered by injustices, Anna does not often talk about her feelings. She references them in passing (about the death of her husband and the pain involved, when trying to convince Mongkut to rejoin his children after losing his favorite) but talking about them directly is uncomfortable for her. She most often acts on them and so long as she believes what she did was right (like freeing the servant, staying behind to help the king), Anna doesn’t care if other people agree with her decision or not. She wants to preserve her former lifestyle to some extent within Siam – she requires a house where she can raise her son as a proper English gentleman, with privacy and room for longstanding traditions. Her teaching methods are precise and straightforward, easy for the children to learn and all directed toward practical learning and application. She tends to react to things in the present as she sees them, but also has one foot sunk firmly into the past with regards to her deceased husband. Anna finds it hard to let him go and move on emotionally. When assigned the task of arranging a ball for visiting dignitaries, she handles the many details effortlessly. Her willingness to uproot herself and move to a place with vast potential shows Anna’s willingness to step outside the familiar and explore the unknown. She comes up with creative ways to teach her students, has an interest in new things and believes that the future is important. But she struggles at times to sense the connections between other people and the meaning behind their actions (not sensing anything amiss with Tuptim until too late). Rather than retreat with the children into the jungle when ordered to do so, Anna looks around her for ideas and uses her son’s bugle and their celebratory fireworks to frighten the enemy.

Enneagram: 1w2 so/sp

Anna arrives in Siam hell-bent on improving everything. She has strong moral objections to what she sees as immoral behavior and does not mind breaking the social rules to make a point – she will not prostrate herself before the king, she trades her ring for a woman’s freedom (but makes the trade first, because the woman “might have kept it and not freed her bond slave”), and she is up front in correcting others. Her power struggle with the prince shows her insistence on appropriate behavior based on principles, and she argues that the king should not have intervened because “he would learned MY lesson, not to fear his father.” She does not hesitate to stand up for herself, or demand he keep his promise to give her a house – and she threatens to leave if he does not; she also almost leaves later, because he allowed a handmaiden’s death, until she realizes her duty to help protect the royal children. Her 2 wing makes her directly interfering – she believes she is helping (and often does make things better).