INFP 4w3 Characters

Society blames Ellen’s behavior on her “bohemian upbringing,” but Ellen is detached from society and wants to pave her own way in life; she decides things on subjective personal standards—even when she tries to commit adultery with Newland, she cannot because she values her relationship with his wife too much to compromise it. She struggles to know what to think, or say, or do on society’s terms, and admits that she spent some of her life “not caring” what other people think, with terrible results. Her inferior Te shows in her tendency to allow others to help her make financial or objective decisions, her lack of ruthlessness in handling her husband, and how she also needs Newland to explain to her the consequences of her choices. More often, she asserts it through blunt, honest judgments about society’s failures, much to his amazement and envy. She constantly pulls away from what society expects from her, and shuns it as being outdated and old-fashioned, even arcane, but a small part of her also seeks inclusion and to belong. Ellen knows Newland better than he knows himself; she’s right in her intuitive assessment that he could never live with himself if he betrayed May, and that would destroy “the beauty” she finds in him as an honorable man. She changes her mind often and feels insecure as she tries to decide whether to leave her husband for good or accept his “generous offer.” Ellen spends much of the film in a Si loop, where she longs to “escape the past,” but finds she cannot; her former experiences, her interactions with her husband, her childhood romance with Newland, all shape and reinforce her decisions in the present, a constant hum underneath her restless nature, her need for constant newness and change, her pursuit of “intellectual people” such as artists, musicians, and actors, etc.

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Ellen has a duel personality, in that on the one hand, she claims that society has no influence upon her decisions, and yet refuses to become Newland’s mistress, not only because of the effect it would have upon his wife (“behind the backs of the people who trust us”) but the societal repercussions (“I have lived in that space, and it is no place for us”). She has found cruelty and rejection in the world, for being a woman who wanders without her husband, yet all her heart longs for us to be loved without condition, to be free, bohemian, and to love beautiful things, places, and unconventional people. She has a harsher view of reality than Newland does; Ellen tells him not to romanticize things, but that no place exists for them to be in. She also cannot love him, unless she gives him up, showing her tendency to deny herself happiness in pursuit of frustration. Ellen never marries again and never takes a lover, from what we understand, after she leaves Newland; thus devoting herself to a relationship she can never have and that will never be consummated. She does not much care for convention or normal things, but also feels a need for a certain level of acceptance. Her 3 wing tries to integrate into society, feels stung when it rejects her, and becomes more concerned with how things “look” to others as she realizes how painful it is to be on the outs.