On envy and initiative.

It stands to reason that a gloomy egomaniac who sees the world as being this great big stupid conspiracy to keep her from being loved and respected and wanted because jealous people are afraid of her innate superiority is going to be one of the most envious people who has ever lived. Such is the case with Elly. We see it when she envied her pathetic loser friend Connie an imaginary lifestyle of fun and excitement. We see it when she and John moan about how Santa is more generous these days than when they were young. We see it every time she wants to get her thumbs jammed in the eyes of anyone she sees as having a better time than she is. The problem is that her refusal to admit to having any sort of negative traits owing to a sort of binary insanity that allows for either stainless virtue or irredeemable evil combines with her refusal to see that her life isn't a bleak hell to make her look even crazier. This either-orism and need to see herself as the victim of all victims surpassing all others forces us to deal with:

Axiom 1g:

While she denies it angrily, Elly is consumed by envy of those around her while at the same time unable to understand why people out there clearly envy her. 

Of course, it's not just that she hates people for getting ahead. She also seems to actively people who earn their praise when she seems to be made to want it for breathing. What Marian seems to have not noticed is that it wasn't her incessant nagging about all the things that Elly did wrong that built a person who lets something she doesn't like to do pile up and become too much to bear. Elly seems to have been born assuming that it was unfair to expect it of her in the first place. This, I should think, is why someone who was really smart in high school failed to thrive in the real world. With no one to impress, Elly simply lost interest in getting her degree owing to this rule of thumb:

Axiom 1h:

Elly seems to be programmed to think that it's not fair to expect her to do anything she finds difficult, messy or boring no matter how much praise she'd earn by doing so because she's also an insane monster of entitlement on top of being a gloomy wacko who thinks everyone is trying to destroy her.