ISFJ 9w1 Characters

Newland says of May that she “lives in her own sheltered little world, where she cannot fathom change,” and in so doing, forces everyone around her to constrain their opinions and conceal their shifting beliefs in order to protect her perceptions. She believes in doing things “the right way,” as in, how people have always done them, and allows that to reinforce a lot of her perceptions. Her intuition into Newland’s relationship with Ellen is razor-sharp, because she pays attention to the sensory clues they give her, as well as remembers their former attachment as children. Her inferior Ne shows in her willingness to adapt to new ideas, but only in so much as they protect her current situation (she brings forward the marriage, to “secure” Newland). She has a very polite, extremely sweet, rather charming way of… getting everyone to do exactly what she wants; instead of berating her husband for her suspicion of his mental unfaithfulness, she cleverly analyzes her options, tells Ellen a lie about her pregnancy, and then proudly announces her real pregnancy to her husband, just when he intends to leave her. She thwarts his serious, deeper conversations with distractions; she gets him to abandon his desire to dine with an artist by asking, “Isn’t he common?” May is kind but also intelligent, with good insights into others, which shows she has spent time carefully analyzing her perceptions of them (Si/Ti).

Enneagram: 9w1

May is sweet, and gentle, and kind, and tolerant, always going along with whatever her husband wants, but she manages to quietly and calmly arrange her life to suit her own needs. She senses more than she lets on about her husband’s feelings for Ellen, and heads them at the pass by innocently talking about her marriage, her hopes for the future, her pregnancy, and her love for her husband, thus changing Ellen’s mind about stealing Newland from her. The entire household winds up catering to May and deciding things based on what would keep her happy, because they do not want to upset her. At the start, May senses his attachment to Ellen and offers to let him out of the engagement if he wants someone else; it later dawns on him that although May never believes ill of anyone, and assumes everyone in the city is just as happy as her own little family, she must have suspected the truth about his feelings for another woman. May shows occasional 1ish sentiments, criticizing people for their lack of morals or for misbehaving, and even being classist (her husband wants to invite an artist over to the house, but she calls him “common” so he does not). May shows a little of 6ish suspicion when unsure; she reads Newland’s rush to marry her quickly as him second-guessing their relationship (which is true), and shows some suspicions later, but then brushes it all from her mind and returns to “sweet innocence.”