One of the most enigmatic characters in literature (in Szabo's The Door)

The servant, maid, cleaning lady, housekeeper, employee, whatever you want to call her - her name is Emerence - in Magda Szabo's The Door (1987) remains - about half-way through the novel - among the most enigmatic characters in literature. She is a woman of near-pathological extremes: at times fiercely protective of her privacy (won't allow anyone even closest friends into her house, yells and screams at the narrator not to bother her in off hours when narrator shows up at her door to ask a Emerence to pick up a package) and at times morbidly confessional (in various long passages she tells the narrator about her tragic childhood and death by lightning of her twin siblings, shares w/ narrator her loathing of organized religion), at times sentimental and faithful (she becomes completely devoted to the narrator - and even more so to the dog whom she inexplicably names Viola, although the dog is a male) and at other times cold and indifferent (she casually tells the narrator how she abetted her best friend's suicide the night before, all while shelling peas for dinner, even asking the befuddled narrator to help). What are we to make of her? Is she just an eccentric, or is she suffering from some kind of mental illness or for some traumatic disorder? We know that she lived through the Nazi takeover of Hungary during WWII, maybe even thrived under Nazi rule? She know that she has endured the years of Soviet domination. She drops a hint that she worked at one time for a police department. What has she seen, what has she imagined, what horrors have made her who she is, and why is she so strange? She seems to me a credible and sympathetic character, but I believe there's more to Szabo's narrative than just a study in mental disorder. Her malady seems in some ways characteristic of her nation and her time, though in what way this may be so I'm not yet sure.

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