MBTI Type: ESTJ

ESTJs have very strong opinions about competency and how people should behave, and that’s the main source of conflict between Lorelai and her mother. Where Lorelai is all emotion, her mother is all-business and constantly irritated by people who are incompetent. She goes through housemaids on a weekly basis, since none of them can live up to her exacting and specific standards. When her husband lands in the hospital after a heart attack, Emily remains detached and starts taking care of everything—ordering fish deliveries, informing everyone on her list, having the lawyer bring his will to the hospital just in case, etc. When Lorelai gets upset about this, Emily breaks down in a rare moment of inferior Fi and says she doesn’t know what she will do without Richard if he dies, since “he IS my life!” She has built her entire life around organizing his life and making sure it runs successfully. When she wants to see her granddaughter, she even negotiates – saying she will pay for college if they get a weekly dinner out of it. Emily is rarely emotional, but does show her heart from time to time, such as when she reassures Rory in the first season that no matter how angry she got at Lorelai, Rory was never a mistake or unwanted. Rather than deal with the pain of her daughter’s rejection of everything the Gilmores hold dear, and deal with the reality of her responsibility in their estrangement, Emily chooses to blame Lorelai for everything. She believes there is a “certain way” of doing things, and is disappointed when others do not follow more traditional approaches to life (her disappointment that Lorelai got pregnant out of wedlock, and then refused to marry the father). Emily has a strong sense of family and personal responsibility; she loves to organize things and attend to “every little detail.” She believes in having experiences, and filing them away for future reference (when Rory resists going to the school dance, Emily worries that she’ll “miss out” on an opportunity that could have become part of her identity and formed memories for years to come). Around her daughter and granddaughter, Emily often banters, follows creative lines of thought, and shows progressive ideas – but often it’s for amusement rather than serious purposes (she quips that she could have married a woman and been “ahead of the curve”). Seeing one interaction with Luke and Lorelai, and Emily correctly discerns that Luke is in love with her, and Lorelai cares about Luke more than she’s willing to admit even to herself. Though Emily tends to be somewhat rigid, being around her granddaughter helps her open up to more experiences. She can sometimes be negative when anticipating the future.

Enneagram: 1w2 so/sp

Part of Emily’s problem with her daughter is the seriousness and straight-laced nature of the 1, pitted against the rebellious energy of a 7 who doesn’t want to be “proper.” Emily cares very much about doing things right. Part of her disgust and disappointment with her daughter is because Lorelai could not “behave herself” and shamed the family when she got pregnant at sixteen years old. This has caused a rift for 16 years between them, because Emily still carries around the humiliation of that, and how it looks to their friends. But Emily can also be harsh and judgmental. She can’t keep any help in the house, because she mercilessly criticizes their flaws and fires them over not answering the door fast enough. Emily takes in kids from the Daughters of the Revolution to train them on manners, but then drops her softness to snap at her for not using the right ice cubes. Instead of being sweet to Sookie when Sookie offers the girls peanut butter and jelly for the tea, she snaps that the girls are ten, not inhuman, and she doesn’t want peasant food. She and Lorelai often wind up in fierce arguments over Lorelai’s inappropriate behavior, her rudeness, etc. Emily also shows a lot of 2 wing pride. She wants to be seen as a loving provider and protector of her family, and often goes to excess in taking “care” of them – paying for Rory’s education (but they have to come to family dinners on Friday nights), wanting to buy her clothes, a car, giving donations to the school in her name, etc. Emily is trying to “buy” Rory’s love, but she can go overboard at times, such as when she gets on board with Richard’s desire to donate a lot of money to Yale in their granddaughter’s name, and put Rory Gilmore on the building. Under stress, Emily shows unhealthy low 4ish tendencies—she holds grudges, she becomes self-absorbed, whiny, and feels like nobody understands or appreciates her.