Throughout her four years in Sanford, Marjorie makes loyal friends, including Constance Stevens, Geraldine Macy, Irma Linton, Susan Atwell, and Muriel Harding.
She also spends the series battling snobbish, unfair students and teachers, most of whom are either jealous of Marjorie's beauty and skill at basketball, resentful of her democratic tendency to befriend disadvantaged girls, or need to overcome unjust assumptions.
Marjorie and her friends are frequently escorted to social events by local boys Hal Macy, Laurie Armitage, Danny Seabrooke, and "The Crane."
At Hamilton, Marjorie makes friends more easily than in high school, while battling the snobbery of a sorority called the Sans Soucians, led by Leslie Cairns.
One historian notes, "In Marjorie, the author has constructed a character meant to represent the ideal product of an education based on the principles of democratic equality and social mobility."
As another writer observes, "Dainty Marjorie and tomboy Grace are exemplars and mother-figures, straightening out those who are heading in the wrong direction, solving problems for those in trouble, and consciously upholding a kind of semi-religious image of the college itself.