MBTI Type: ESFJ

Dominant Extroverted Feeling – ease of emotional communication and shaping their actions around how their decisions affect others: Violet has a natural gift for making everyone in her life feel loved, welcomed, and accepted, and she goes out of her way to gently coax her children into finding ‘love matches’ because she was so profoundly happy with her own husband that she now struggles even to ‘breathe’ without him being there, and only gets up every morning and functions because her family needs her. The way she focuses on everyone else and their happiness, reads and responds to their feelings, always knows what just the right thing to say to them is, etc., is what makes her such a likable matriarch of the family; she intimately knows each of her children and their smaller habits, and is accepting of them, but also urges them to step outside their comfort zone. With one fellow 9w1 child, who is super introverted, Violet cautions her against taking the ‘easy path’ and hurrying to get married to someone she barely knows, because it just solves the problem of needing to find someone.

Auxiliary Introverted Sensing – working with what exists and their personal history to make an immediate impact: Violet relates everything back to her own experiences and marriage by comparison; she focuses on the immediate needs of her family and on their social roles (offering to step aside when Anthony gets married, even though she will miss being in charge of the family) and on doing what is best in the present, because a lot of what she feels is proper is dictated by tradition within society (FeSi). It’s not right for her to remain in charge of the house; it is only proper for her to step aside, and then she isn’t sure what role she will have in her family after that (Fe). She is reminiscent of the past and not at all fond of change, finding it hard to separate her heart from her dead husband and the enormous role he played in her life. Whenever anyone flies in the face of convention and does something unusual, such as her daughter’s haste in getting married being somewhat untraditional, Violet objects to it.

Tertiary Extroverted Intuition – an interest in many different possibilities and in seeing connections between unrelated ideas: Violet is sweet and generous, interested in new ideas, but not particularly curious about generating them for herself. She is, however, quite a good judge of character, curious about everyone and their unique experiences, and supportive of whatever her children want to be, within reason. She doesn’t mind that one of her girls has no interest in courting anyone and allows her to stand off to the sidelines while she focuses on the others.

Inferior Introverted Thinking – critical under stress, can get hung up on the “logic” of things: She only analyzes things that pertain to her children, for the most part, in a desire to better understand their reasons for making decisions that she finds questionable.

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Enneagram: 9w1

Enneagram 9 – desires freedom from others’ influences, by going along with them and being tolerant, until it matters not to: From how she speaks of her husband, we know that Violet wrapped her entire existence up in him and she struggles to know what to do with herself in his absence. She is very open-minded, tolerant, and accepting of all her children and their eccentricities, but also does not want to engage in conflict. She is hesitant to speak to the queen on her daughter’s behalf about her marriage, because she has some doubts about the haste of this match, and does not want to ‘risk jeopardizing it,’ but she also knows the queen won’t approve, given she wanted Francesca to marry another man.

1 wing brings in a desire for moral rightness and perfection: She often urges her children to follow their hearts rather than their heads and to be in touch with themselves, but also to do the right thing. Violet does not like others to think ill of her or her intentions, and she is easily scandalized by conversations about her private life. She even finds it shameful to confess that she misses sex, and wishes she were not ‘past’ that part of her life.

Learn all about your Enneagram type in 9 Kinds of Quirky: The 9 Enneagram Types!