Character Analysis
Marjorie is Renfrew's wife and the only woman amongst the boy's club that is Timescape's point-of-view characters. To paraphrase the one and only James Brown, this is a man's world, but it would mean nothing—nothing—without a woman's perspective.
Home Sweet Home
Marjorie's sphere of influence is the home. This is evident when Marjorie is playing hostess for the novel's first dinner party. As she thinks:
Every step of this dinner party had been meticulously planned in advance. It was only out of a subconscious feeling that she should not intimidate her guests by being too perfect a hostess that she darted back and forth from the kitchen, chattering constantly, and pushing back her hair as though it were all a bit too much for her. (5.1)
Even her mistakes are part of her carefully curated plan to make her home feel more homey. Wow.
There are several parallels here to how Renfrew feels in his laboratory. Renfrew is in complete control and feels utterly comfortable there, and Marjorie feels the same way about her home. If you'll pardon the obvious pun, she's got this home thing down to a science.
However, also in parallel to her husband, Marjorie begins to lose control over her sphere of influence as the ecological disasters begin to affect England more and more. At first the changes are small. Some squatters move in nearby and beg for some milk; she needs to stand in line longer for fewer groceries; she has to raise chickens and preserve vegetables. Pro that she is, though, Marjorie adapts to the situation.
But as the ecological crisis continues, Marjorie loses more and more control over her sphere. Renfrew spends more days and longer hours in his laboratory, and the outside world begins to invade her home more and more. As she mentions to Renfrew:
"It's been a long hard day, one thing after another. I had to queue up for hours, they were out of meat everywhere, I can't get anyone to come and fix the loo for a whole bloody fortnight, and someone broke the lock on the garage today and stole a bunch of tools." (21.116)
This quote brings us to the key role Marjorie plays in the novel: She's our down to earth character. Renfrew, Markham, and Peterson are trying to counter the world's problems through abstract means like science and politics, but in reality, they come into contact with these problems quite rarely—though when they do, it's pretty bad.
Through Marjorie, we receive firsthand updates on how the world is changing and how it is affecting people, providing us with a closer glimpse at the stakes involved in Renfrew's experiment.
Network Connection Issues
As the novel continues, Marjorie begins to grow disconnected from Renfrew and the world around her, and this disconnection comes in many forms. She is unable to join in the science talk of Renfrew and his guests, which more and more becomes the topic of her dinner parties (24.2). Renfrew also begins spending more and more time at the laboratory, leaving Marjorie at home most nights (21.114). And she takes up drinking, noting "After all, what was there to stay sober for?" (37.1). Yup, her world is crumbling.
Drunk and alone, Marjorie is visited by Peterson. While she's nervous at first, eventually she is "glad to have him there, keeping the loneliness and fear at bay" (37.53). Ultimately, the two end up sleeping together. Oops.
Fate Unknown
Ultimately, Marjorie's fate remains unknown. We know she doesn't leave with Peterson. After his lab loses power for good, Renfrew seems to think he'll head home to find Marjorie waiting for him, but he doesn't know about her night with Peterson, so we're a bit more skeptical about their happy reunion.
While ultimately, we'd like to say things will turn out all right with these two crazy one-time love birds, the truth is that the novel leaves us with more questions than answers. And given all the questions we still have about space, time, and the existence of the universe, it's kind of fitting that the conflicts of human drama have some unanswered questions of their own.