MBTI Type: ESFP

Margaret is a fascinating character / woman in that while many of her actions are manipulative and calculating, she still manages to come across as pitiable when stuck in an atrocious, abusive marriage to a man who married her just to drain her bank account. She is all about living life to the fullest and taking whatever opportunities arise—when Ian meets her on a train and invites her to Scotland, she drops all her plans and goes with him, then very quickly starts sleeping with him. She accepts his proposal after their first night together, moves into the castle, and immediately starts refurbishing it and bankrolling his plan for an underwater excavation of a sunken ship full of gold (she assumes this will “pay off” in the end). As his lawyers later point out, she has had “hundreds of one night stands,” and spends most of her time having sex or indulging in sensory pleasures and activities (home decorating, scrapbooking, attending parties, buying new clothes, etc). She lives so much in the moment, she doesn’t think about the future at all—the most glaring example of this encouraging one of her lovers to take a Polaroid picture of them both in the bathroom, in a compromising position. Since she’s wearing only her famous pearls, it makes her recognizable and her husband uses it to trash her in court, accuse her of sexual misbehavior, and win a lawsuit against her for infidelity. He uses her diaries, full of her sexual exploits (though under the code “V”) to achieve the same thing. Her Fi is also quite strong, in that she cares mostly about her father and their relationship. She has a strong desire to please and not disappoint him, and feels devastated when he’s ashamed of her when the scandal breaks, but she also refuses to reveal the name of the man in the photograph or to tell the judge what “V” stands for. She takes those secrets to her grave, because of her unwillingness to go against her own standards, and her deep need for privacy. Half the time when people ask her to open up emotionally, she gives them nothing—a blank expression and no indication of where she “is” emotionally. She has good Te, but also uses it to lash out at people—when a “friend” insults her for being so promiscuous, Margaret snaps back at her that at least she enjoys sex and is GOOD at it, which is more than she can say for her friend; it’s not my fault you’re terrible at sex. Ouch. She also has Fi morality, in that whatever she decides is okay, she doesn’t see as a problem. She argues that “it’s not adultery if the marriage is unhappy; it doesn’t count,” signaling that her moral value is centered there, regardless of what an arbitrary social convention states about marriage.

Enneagram: 2w3 sx/so

Margaret comes across like a 7 at first, in her desire to always be happy and “not bored” and in her excessive love of sex, but as the episodes unfold, the truth starts to bleed through that “caring for people,” particularly men, is the most important thing in her life. She adopts Ian and offers to bankroll him, using money and sex to appeal to him. She offers to get her stepchildren a puppy and look after it while they are away with their mother, as a way to buy their affections. It distresses her that neither of them like her. She’s possessive of her father and hates his new wife so much, she spreads a nasty rumor about her sleeping with Ian after the woman lashes out at her for her adultery “making your father sick.” When she senses that Ian is slipping away from her, and doesn’t intend to let her inherit or live on the estate after his death (her “due” for all she does for him), she falsifies a letter in his first wife’s handwriting, stating that his children were sired by someone else, and then comforts him when he becomes distraught, making herself the center of his world once more. Her reputation matters to her, and she shape-shifts to become whatever he wants from her, but is also hard-working, ambitious, and aware of practicality (you can’t just not pay your bills, Ian!). At one point, she defends her actions by asserting that “All I ever tried to do was help him!”

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