In hindsight, I look at it as how with proper framing, anybody can be made to look sympathetic.
When we first meet Lorna, she's very sweet and helpful to the new inmates. She talks endlessly about Christopher--whom we never meet, and never comes to visit her. So we're lead to think, "Aha--he dumped her ass when she went to prison, and the poor girl just hasn't come to grips with that." And the audience's imagination takes over from there--did Lorna take the fall for Christopher, who dropped her the minute she was no more use to him? Or was he taken by surprise, the way Piper's fiancé was? There is the possibility that she made him up as a good excuse to avoid being a target for becoming a 'prison wife' (but her relationship with Nicky would fly in the face of that.)
She has her racist rants, but sadly, too many Americans would relate to what she said, which would draw her to them. Despite this, she does seem to have some fairly decent relations with minority inmates (setting things up so Miss Rosa could have one final moment of glory somehow makes her seem less awful.)
She's trusted with driving the prisoners (like Miss Rosa) to their medical appointments and often left by herself. This gives the audience the impression that whatever she's in for, she must not be considered overall dangerous and a menace to society.
And we do finally see Christopher in her flashback, and since they seemed to hit it off, we immediately think, "OK, so what happened?" And we're shocked to find out that although they met and went out....he decided after one date that he wasn't interested, and she went full-on psycho, dangerously so. And it's very much a 'yank the rug out from under you' moment to realize fifties-pinup gal actually tried to commit murder and was a stalker. By the time you find out what she really did, she had time to win the audience over.
When you stop and think on it, sort of a good warning for life in general--people can present whatever side of themselves to you that they want, and you might not find out the whole ugly story til later when you're already emotionally invested in them--or perhaps now their spouse, in-law, long-term partner, etc.....
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