ENFP 7w8 Characters

Mary naturally takes advantage of whatever situation arises, such as first coming to the school and pretending to have a different name just to mess with the order of things. She immediately decides based on what Rachel is wearing that she ought to come up with a different name for herself. She goes on to take various opportunities by looking at their larger potential—when she finds out the nuns go to chapel once a week, she earns money from the other girls by giving them tours of the holy cloister (which is forbidden). She comes up with the idea of plastering her cousin’s face, but forgets that plaster hardens, and Marvel Anne winds up stuck inside it for hours on end. She spends one afternoon doing nothing but blowing smoke rings through an old chair in the basement, because the nuns didn’t want them to make any noise—and that sets off a fire alarm that brings the fire department. When she thinks about how to help the school win the band competition, Mary realizes their visit to the art museum is only two blocks from the competition and recruits Rachel to sneak off and spy on New Trends. Mary does not show a lot of emotion most of the time, but when it does appear, it’s very quiet and internalized. Rather than commiserate with the other girls about the death of her favorite teacher, she sneaks into the chapel to say farewell to her in private. She doesn’t talk to Rachel about her decision to become a Nun, in the awareness that Rachel won’t like it and will accuse her of being brainwashed. She has to ponder it over in silence and in her own heart, as she gradually comes to respect the nuns by watching Mother Superior’s kindness over the course of her last term in the school. Her decision to buck authority becomes a decision to surrender to it, not in a loss of self, but out of a desire to belong somewhere that holds deep meaning to her. Mary rarely makes decisions with others in mind, and other than her pranks, has a logical explanation for everything she does. She often corrects Rachel (“you can only get malaria in the tropics,” “Catholics aren’t allowed to kill themselves”), etc. Mary shows low Si in that her sense of time isn’t great. She procrastinates about learning to swim for three years and then almost drowns when it’s time to take the test. She hates physical activities of any kind (she spends more time sitting down or scheming than enjoying nature or their exercise marches). But in the end, she wants to belong and settle down, and seems content with the idea of spending the rest of her life at St. Francis’ Convent.

Enneagram: 7w8

Everyone shares the same view of Mary, that nobody can boss her around or tell her what to do. She bucks authority at every turn, by making things interesting for herself—many of her “scathingly brilliant ideas” are just to mess with the situation and make it more interesting, like planting bubble bath in the sugar canisters to live up the nuns’ afternoon tea, or smoking the cigars the plumber left behind on Silent Sunday. She doesn’t like negativity or to be punished, but still continues to push back against the Mother Superior, fully aware that she’s going to get caught. She hates feeling guilty or ashamed as well; after she mocks one sister’s German accent, and is told that the woman suffered great “indignities” in a German concentration camp, Mary snaps to Rachel that she “hates” the mother superior (for making her feel bad about what she said) and then immediately suggests they race each other to the statue, dismissing the angst as soon as it arrives. Mary isn’t afraid of authority and unlike Rachel and the other girls, never backs down from her bad decisions or feels bad about them. Her decision to join the order comes from a deliberate choice—as the mother superior tells Rachel, Mary never “capitulated, she chose.”