With the energy of the young, Marian will engage with New Money or Old. She’ll call on a social outcast, befriend a Black woman, and concern herself with the Cook’s problem. She’ll also become romantically entangled with a man her Aunt Agnes has labeled an adventurer.
Marian, always willing to discard convention, is not always right to do so. Her enthusiasm leads her to overstep, such as when she brings cast-off shoes to Peggy’s mother’s home — a wealthy and stylish household — as an act of charity.
The problem with Marian is not just her youth and naivete. Her rebelliousness can feel fresh at times, and then foolish. The story has made her the bridge between Aunt Agnes’ Old Money prejudices and the Gilded Age’s ambition. It’s a difficult straddle for a character, and Marian isn’t always up to the task. Also, I can’t help wondering if the actress, Meryl Streep’s daughter, wasn’t cast for her pedigree — how Old Money! — rather than for the innovation of a New Money unknown.
Marian has a lot of energy — she’s always walking Ada’s little dog, lol — and a taste for conflict. She likes to stir the pot in social situations. Her father, Agnes’ and Ada’s brother, was, by the sisters’ accounts, a selfish terror. He burned through the family money, used up the sisters’ inheritance with no remorse, and left Marian destitute at his death.
She’s a Four. Although her past has hardship, she is undeterred and willing, if necessary, to fail. It takes a certain bravery to step forward in so many social situations. Not every number would persist against such risk.