Janice Soprano - Personality

Personality

Janice is rebellious. This is evidenced, in part, by the Rolling Stones tattoo on her breast and her placement on an Unwanted Persons list by Canada, which she was permanently banned from entering.

Janice is also a chronic malingerer. Simply put by her sister-in-law, Carmela, "she has no work ethic". She conveniently claimed she had the Epstein-Barr virus to justify sleeping, as an escape from performing her duties as Bobby Baccala, Jr.'s wife and his children's stepmother. Janice also claimed she developed carpal tunnel syndrome while operating the steamed milk machine at a Seattle espresso bar, in order to claim disability benefits. Later, Janice relied upon the latter excuse to avoid cooking Sunday dinner from scratch (when Tony and Carmela were separated). Her complaint to Tony that the physical attack by the Russians, who had intimidated her into returning Svetlana's prosthetic leg, had exacerbated the pains in her arm gave Tony sufficient ammunition to obtain Slava's blessing to retaliate against Janice's attackers.

Although she would never admit it, Janice's personality is very much like her mother's; they are both manipulative, violently tempestuous, and suffer from Narcissistic personality disorder. Janice was manipulative towards Richie Aprile, telling him he deserved more than he received from Tony. During sexual encounters, she made suggestions that Richie take over as boss, and she goaded him into the power play he attempted against Tony. She also manipulated Bobby Baccalieri, after his wife's death, by pretending she had cooked meals other women had sent him and by scaring his children. She knew Baccala would call after being unable to cope with their fear and confusion.

Janice, like Livia (and Meadow), also tends to want what she cannot have. She wanted a bigger house than Tony and Carmela's, with a pool, an expensive wedding, and an affluent lifestyle, even though Richie struggled to afford such luxuries and his attempts to make the necessary income caused conflicts with Tony. She lost interest in Ralph Ciferetto after he dumped Rosalie Aprile for her, although to get what she wanted she indulged both men's sexual fetishes. Later, although Janice went to quite extraordinary lengths to woo Bobby Baccala, she appeared to lose interest in him, too, after they married.

Janice is like Tony as well, in that she is competitive and motivated by the chase. Even before resorting to underhanded tactics when competing with other women for Bobby Baccala's affections, trying to extort Livia's vintage record collection from Svetlana (by stealing Svetlana's prosthetic leg), and desiring a bigger house than Tony's, Janice demonstrated her competitive nature, as a child, in Tony's memory flashbacks and in the family home movies she gave Tony for his 47th birthday.

Janice's personality was likely shaped by both nature and nurture. In addition to sharing the above-described traits with her relatives, Janice was brutally berated by Livia over the years; Tony alluded to this when the morning after Richie was killed, telling his mother: "Janice never had a chance." Additionally, as the oldest child in a household financed by crime, Janice was not only aware of her parents' activities (as Meadow was aware of Tony's), she was complicit in them. For example, "Johnny Boy" recruited Janice to participate with him and other mobsters in using their daughters as "fronts" to justify the men's presence at an amusement park, where the men conducted criminal activities.