MBTI Type: ESTJ

Bathsheba is strong-willed, independent, and determined to work alongside the men; she promises to be up before them and to get more done than any of them. She hires whom she must to do a job, at a decent wage, and expects them to do it well. She judges the farm as having ‘fallen into disrepair since my uncle’s death and fires his lazy overseer. She negotiates for wheat prices that are fair or above the market price, and she farms out responsibilities to more competent men, but also finds it hard to be honest about her emotions or to treat them sensibly. She is easily able to take control of a negative situation and turn it around, such as when she sees no one is looking at their grain due to her being a woman, and attracts the attention of a local farmer, which brings other men to their table. She hires Gabriel to help tend her sheep as an overseer, since she knows he has good farming skills. When a storm threatens the haystacks, she pulls on her boots in the middle of a downpour and helps him cover them. Bathsheba is a very present woman, who isn’t afraid to climb down into a sheep dip in her dress and get her hands dirty, and who loves to ride her horse at top speeds through the countryside, and who attends to all the details of her life without any trouble. She is also short-sighted and naïve, never really thinking about the consequences of her actions. She marries Troy without knowing him for long, and severely misjudges his character – she hopes him a romantic, dashing hero and instead finds him a drunken, egocentric lout whom soon earns her scorn for his laziness. She foolishly sends the neighbor a valentine, raising his romantic hopes that she looks at him “in that way.” Her inferior Fi is sometimes unlikable in how she fiercely asserts her independence right away; she does not wish to marry or be anyone’s property, she intends to do her own thing, she does not like to be told what to do, she can do everything men can do… Bathsheba intends to prove to everyone that she can work just as hard as any man, and do the job better while she’s at it. She keeps Gabriel on despite turning down his earlier marriage proposal, out of a certain fondness for him she does not care to admit. She falls head over heels for Troy and impulsively leaps into a marriage with him. She then considers marrying a wealthy landowner who lives nearby, to expand her property.

Enneagram: 3w2 sp/sx

Bathsheba is quite vain, but also self-confident; she has total confidence in her ability to run a farm and puts a lot of hard work into it, informing those who live and work there that she will be up before they are awake, and in the fields before they go out into the fields; she works harder, longer, and tougher than any of them. She has a great talent for turning situations around to her favor, but also semi-detachment from her feelings, and an awareness of social conventions even if she tries to live above them for a time (her refusal of Gabriel’s proposal is that he is ‘above her’ in position; that reverses when she becomes an heiress). She will not admit to her feelings for Gabriel, until she has no other choice – to stop him from leaving for America. She loathes humbling herself, and has to seem important to others. Her 2 wing enjoys impressing everyone with her skills and fierceness. She can be quarrelsome and pleasure-seeking.