ENFP 2w1 Characters

Helen is a romantic idealist at heart, who loves to fiercely debate her ideas at the breakfast table; she says as resentful as she was of Henry turning her ideas inside out and proving them all wrong, she also rather enjoyed it! In her own way, she is flighty and inconsistent, changing her mind about people and where she wants to be on a whim (falling in love with someone overnight, then waking up a day or two later and not caring about him at all). She also has poignant characterizations of others; she is much harder on Henry than Margaret is, for she sees through him to a lack of character underneath, which does not come out later until she becomes pregnant. She is aghast at Margaret not caring about his moral character and having “no wish to change him” in any way. She does not openly talk about her feelings so much as she acts on them, and she tends to self-blame to enormous excess; she meddles in the Bast fortunes and then feels responsible for their choices, so she flouts all convention and takes them to Henry for help. She tells Margaret that she loves her and will support her, but will also have nothing to do with the Wilcox family. Helen isolates herself from her siblings and the rest of society for months at a time, aware that her pregnancy will cause a scandal; she only returns to them when they deceive her. She tends to take immediate action, and she wants tangible results (to make and break engagements, to help people out of poverty and improve their status, etc). Helen tends to be blunt at times. Her inferior Si shows in how forgetful she is and neglectful of her environment; as Margaret says, she’s always running off with other people’s possessions or umbrellas, because she can’t ever remember she never brought one with her. She loves books and doesn’t like to move away from her childhood home, because it has sentimental importance to her.

Enneagram: 2w1

Helen is extremely distressed to find other people in dire straits and tries to insert herself into their situation, even when they attempt to turn her away; she feels so guilt-ridden about her accidental involvement in the Bast family misfortune, she insists her brother Tibby give them a thousand pounds of her own annual inheritance to make up for it; and when he says he cannot find them anywhere, she refuses to take no for an answer and pushes him to find them at any cost. While her sister gives up on them, Helen tries to do whatever she can to alleviate their financial problems, but also winds up sleeping with Mr. Bast, thus compromising her honor and winding up pregnant with his child. She is so ashamed of this, she flees abroad and her sister only finds out about it when Helen returns to Howards End to retrieve some of her beloved books from the library. She has very rigid moral views of right and wrong, which she refuses to deviate from, even when it earns her the scorn and disapproval of others.