Tangled: Is Mother Gothel an ESTJ or an ESFJ?

Surprisingly, Mother Gothel’s personality type in Tangled is highly disputed, popular consensus being split between ESFJ and ESTJ. Each camp has their reasons, some better than others, but either way, after rewatching the movie, we completely understand the confusion. Her character, in spite of being reasonably well-developed, is actually rather complicated, given the limited screen time, her current life stage, etc.

Typically, for characters, we just do a structured, function-by-function analysis. However, with Mother Gothel, there’s a variety of factors at play that made me want to treat her analysis a little bit different. We did something similar with Joker (2019): Analyzing Arthur Fleck’s Personality Type, only in this article, we’ll actually state a clear opinion on the personality type we believe Mother Gothel to be, whether that be ESFJ or ESTJ. Naturally, we don’t expect everyone to agree with our final conclusion, but hopefully we can lay out a reasonable case either way. (Please don’t just scroll down to see the conclusion, and then post an angry comment. Read the article first.)

The Relevant Factors To Consider

Factor #1: Mother Gothel is a villain

It can be far too easy to automatically assume that all villains are thinkers. After all, the immoral actions of a villain are often not in line with stereotypical feeler attributes. However, anyone can be a villain, regardless of personality type. And, while some feelers will become villains over a misguided sense of justice or misapplied ideals, we can’t assume that feelers won’t ever be completely morally absent. That’s not objective. Thinkers can be moral, just like feelers can be amoral.

Factor #2: Mother Gothel is a narcissist

“Narcissism is characterized by a grandiose sense of self-importance, a lack of empathy for others, a need for excessive admiration, and the belief that one is unique and deserving of special treatment.” – Psychology Today

Mother Gothel is narcissistic, which muddles her personality type. Throughout the movie, we see her constantly boost her own image and importance, while simultaneously belittling and criticizing Rapunzel.

“Rapunzel, look in that mirror. You know what I see? I see a strong, confident, beautiful young lady…Oh look, you’re here too!”

Unfortunately, people tend to associate narcissistic traits with Te dominants (ESTJ or ENTJ). After all, ESFJs are known for being empathetic and caring, while the ESTJs are known for lacking empathy and enforcing their own selfish goals. In fact, inferior Fi, when insecure, can surface as inflating one’s self-importance in order to get external validation. However, inferior Ti can surface similarly. For the record, many EXTJ stereotypes are of unhealthy, imbalanced, or immoral EXTJs.

It’s not fair nor objective to assume that all narcissists are EXTJs. The question to ask is: what would a narcissistic ESFJ look like?

The Takeaway

Between being a narcissist and a villain, it’s safe to assume that this woman is no saint. So, unless we’re going to say that only certain personality types can be narcissists and villains, we have to devalue arrogance, selfishness, and general acts of villainy in this analysis. After all, any personality type can be selfish or selfless, arrogant or humble, evil or good. Fe does not automatically make someone virtuous, just like Te does not automatically make someone mean. We need to focus on the cognitive function reasoning for her actions rather than the immoral or selfish nature of them.

Why is Mother Gothel an ESXJ?

Before we go into her judging axis, let us take a few moments to discuss why she’s Si/Ne, and specifically why she’s an ESXJ rather than an ISXJ. After that, we’ll address the main question.

Si:

“Just let me heal him. And you and I will be together, forever. Just like you want. Everything will be the way it was. I promise. Just like you want.” – Rapunzel

Mother Gothel tries hard to maintain a certain lifestyle, without allowing any significant changes. Naturally, when the flower is stolen, Mother Gothel finds the new source, Rapunzel, and locks her away in a tower. However, as Rapunzel grows older, Mother Gothel fails to consider that she might need to make adjustments concerning how she’s imprisoning the girl. She believes that she can keep telling Rapunzel to just stay in the tower, and that Rapunzel will do just that. This is a common pitfall of Si: fixating on a specific point in time and failing to see when reality starts to deviate from that initial, internal image.

Mother Gothel’s primary reasoning, when encouraging the girl to listen, centers around security. She often claims that she’s trying to protect Rapunzel, and warns the girl that she’ll regret venturing out into the unknown world.

Ne:

“One way or another, something will go wrong. I swear. Ruffians, thugs, poison ivy, quicksand. Cannibals and snakes, the plague. Yes! Also, large bugs. Men with pointy teeth. And stop! No more. You’ll just upset me.”

Mother Gothel uses the fear of the unknown to chain Rapunzel to that tower. Of course, while many types can fear the unknown, Mother Gothel specifically casts a wide net, when trying to encourage Rapunzel to be afraid. She doesn’t just focus on one or two likely scenarios. Rather, she lists every possibility she can think of, no matter how major or minor. She does something similar when listing all the reasons why Rapunzel is incapable of facing these potential threats, which just further showcases her Si-Ne. (Quote below)

“On your own, you won’t survive. Sloppy, underdressed, immature, clumsy. Please, they’ll eat you up alive. Gullible, naive, positively grubby, ditsy and a bit…. Well, hmm, vague. Plus, I believe, getting kind of chubby.”

While we did consider Si dominant, or ISXJ, for her, we ultimately concluded two things: (1) her Ne is higher than inferior, and (2) she’s likely an extraverted judging dominant (Fe or Te). Point 2 will be addressed in the next second, but as for higher Ne, you can see that in how animated she acts, and how verbally expressive and ramble-y she is. In some of her conversations with Rapunzel, there is almost a whiplash effect with how quickly she shifts from one point to another. For instance…

“Blah-blah-blah-blah. It’s very annoying! I’m just teasing. You’re adorable. I love you so much, darling.”

So, Is Mother Gothel an ESTJ or an ESFJ?

“Mother knows best. Mother will protect you.”

There are some very strong extraverted judging themes with this character. For instance, she constantly emphasizes her authority, how she knows best, and how she’s just trying to protect Rapunzel. She doesn’t give Rapunzel any room to argue, or question this authority. Of course, as a narcissistic or toxic extraverted judging dominant, Mother Gothel is openly critical and judgmental in all of her interactions.

“Don’t ever ask to leave this tower again…Don’t forget it. You’ll regret it.”

However, none of these point specifically to ESTJ or ESFJ.

The ESTJ Arguments for Mother Gothel

When considering this character, these are the main things that caused us to consider ESTJ.

1. Critical Nature

Mother Gothel is very critical of everything Rapunzel does, from how long it takes Rapunzel to hoist her up into the tower to how Rapunzel mumbles.

“Then I don’t know why it takes so long.”

2. Lack of empathy and concern for others

Mother Gothel seems completely oblivious of Rapunzel’s wants, concerns and general emotional state. Mother Gothel is too wrapped up in herself, and her own personal concerns to care about anyone else. She constantly ignores Rapunzel, interrupts her, and talks down to her.

3. Detached from her daughter

Mother Gothel seems to stay as detached as possible from Rapunzel, physically and emotionally. She constantly leaves her alone for long lengths of time, gives her nicknames that reflect her use (“flower”), and doesn’t truly seem emotionally attached to the girl in anyway. It all looks manufactured, so she can hold onto her eternal source of youth.

The ESFJ Arguments for Mother Gothel

1. Forms a fake family

While her expressions of love seem insincere to the viewer, Mother Gothel’s go-to strategy after capturing the princess is to create a fake family. She pretends that she is Rapunzel mother and preys on that relationship.

2. Relies on emotional manipulation

Mother Gothel relies on emotional manipulation to imprison the girl, rather than physical chains. She could have found a way to maintain control over the girl, like how in the original tale Rapunzel was completely incapable of escaping the tower. Instead, Mother Gothel weaponizes guilt and fear to keep Rapunzel there. After Rapunzel does leave the tower, Mother Gothel strategizes a way to emotionally break Rapunzel, rather than physically taking control and dragging her back. She makes Rapunzel believe that there’s nothing for her outside of the tower so that she will never want to leave or disobey again.

“I just listened to the sound of complete and utter betrayal and followed that.”

3. Emotionally expressive

Mother Gothel has a pronounced dramatic flair or theatrical nature that seems more in line with an FJ than a TJ.

4. Avoids playing the bad guy

Mother Gothel does not like playing the “bad guy”. Typically, ESTJs have little issue playing the bad guy. It’s a lot more natural for a thinker to do so, because they’re more detached from feelings in general. So, the fact that Mother Gothel calls this out and consciously tries to avoid playing the bad guy, suggests ESFJ rather than ESTJ. She desperately tries to maintain her image as the “good guy” for as long as possible, only resorting to physical violence or overtly evil actions as a last resort.

“Great. Now I’m the bad guy.”

5. Avoids framing her decisions in a self-centric way

Mother Gothel deflects blame onto Rapunzel, rather than claiming control over her own evil actions. This by itself makes little sense, because Mother Gothel is a villain. She doesn’t care that she’s committing evil acts, yet she feels the need to act like Rapunzel forced her hand. Basically, Mother Gothel makes her own actions about Rapunzel, rather than about herself. She never frames things in such a way to make herself appear selfish or self-serving. She makes it all about Rapunzel, even when it’s so obviously not.

“You want me to be the bad guy? Fine, now I’m the bad guy.”

“Now, look what you’ve done, Rapunzel. Oh, don’t worry, dear. Our secret will die with him.”

6. Emphasizes the selfish nature of others

Mother Gothel constantly calls out how selfish and cruel the world is. Of course, to the viewer, this is blatant hypocrisy, but it’s the key reason Mother Gothel uses to convince Rapunzel not to leave. It’s common for Fe users to fixate on how selfish everyone else is.

“The world is dark and selfish and cruel.”

In conclusion…

Looking over the evidence as a whole, the support for Te seems to primarily cover the same ground as narcissism, which makes that evidence not very reliable. Whereas, the potential Fe evidence is much more extensive. Therefore, we believe that Mother Gothel is an ESFJ, albeit a critical and narcissitic one.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below. Also, if you enjoyed this format, please let us know, so we can aim to do similar articles in the future!