MBTI Type: INFP

Madeleine lives according to her own values, which are different from the people around her; she both does not engage in casual sex (unlike the servants she spends her time with – while not judging them for it), and she doesn’t find the Marquis’ stories filthy or bad, she sees them as an outlet for her own fantasies. She tells Coulmier that if she couldn’t be so bad on the page, she couldn’t be so good in life. She self-inserts into every story, becoming all of the Marquis’ female characters, from his whores to his innocent scullery maids, and lives vicariously through his words rather than having a sexual life of her own. Because she likes what he writes, she goes out of her way to help get his works out into the public eye. Even though it’s dangerous to get caught going into his room, taking papers from him, or delivering him to his contact in the city, Madeleine does so because she believes in his creativity and thinks that he will make people happy with his lurid tales. She isn’t all that concerned with the appropriateness of her actions in any given situation, on the world’s terms, nor rational about her momentary decisions. She is incredibly naïve; it never occurs to her the play might have negative consequences, get them shut down, etc., or that by copying down the Marquis’ work, it could endanger her mother’s job at the asylum (because all the wine turns the laundry pink). She also fails to understand that an inmate intends to rape her, even after he has assaulted her twice—and because of this, she trusts him when she should not, conspiring with him to get the Marquis’ final story out of the asylum. Madeline reacts with direct action, through her inferior Te. She takes the risk of entering the Marquis’ quarters, giving him a kiss for each page, and reacts whenever anyone threatens her. She slaps him when he forces a deep, intense kiss upon her rather than a chaste peck on the cheek (it doesn’t occur to her to transpose his filthy intentions from the page to real life, a weakness of her Ne; assumes the best of him, rather than that he might prey on her). Madeleine burns the face of a man who tries to rape her, and slaps his hands away at other times (“no touching!”) but fails to stay away from him, to her own downfall.

Enneagram: 9w8 sp/so

Madeleine is too tolerant for her own good – she makes things okay that aren’t, but are in fact, violations of her person. She assumes the best of everyone and that no one has any serious intentions of hurting her, a mistake that costs her life. She will get assaulted by a man, burn his face with an iron, and then… continue to be around him, as if nothing had happened, while insisting it’s all right. She enters the Marquis’ room to receive pages from him, despite the fact that it could cost her a job at the asylum, and never thinking he might have untoward intentions, despite the perversions he writes. Her 8 wing kicks into action whenever anyone tries to hurt her, or tell her what to do; she will tell them off, punch them, slap them, and then go back to her work. Madeleine is also somewhat avoidant and withdrawn, in the sense that… she could go out, fall in love with someone available (instead if pining after a priest), and experience sex of her own, but she prefers to imagine it and live vicariously through books instead.