Another female character in The Outsiders is Sandy , and she ’ s also a fitting example of women being portrayed negatively . Early in the book , it ’ s established that Sandy and Sodapop are dating , and that they ’ re in love . In the middle of the book when Sandy had to go to Florida , it ' s said to be due to her getting pregnant with Sodapop ' s child . So , it comes as a shock to everyone when Darry explains to Ponyboy how " When Sandy went to Florida … it wasn ' t Soda , Ponyboy . He told me he loved her , but I guess she didn ' t love him like he thought she did , because it wasn ' t him " ( Hinton 174 ). Finding out that Sandy is a cheater is enough for anyone to dislike her , but when she cheated on one of the most lovable characters in the entire book it gave her an extremely negative look . Sandy betrayed Soda ' s trust , and there isn ' t much you can do to redeem yourself from that .
To rub more salt in the wound , Darry also tells Ponyboy how "[ Sodapop ] wanted to marry her anyway , but she just left " ( Hinton 174 ). S . E . Hinton adding this just accentuates how good of a person Sodapop is , and how bad Sandy is for still not wanting to be with him even after cheating for no good reason . This brings her down even further . Additionally , Sandy returned Soda ' s letter to her unopened . She didn ’ t care enough to even give a response to Sodapop , even after seeing all his love and care for her even after he cheated on her . This closing chapter reveal portrays Sandy as a terrible woman , and it ruins any good qualities mentioned about her earlier in the book . This twist adds absolutely nothing to the story and was just an unnecessary sub-plot with the goal of making readers hate another one of the few female characters .
The final woman character in The Outsiders is Marcia . Marcia , who we only see in two chapters . Marcia , who we learn nothing about besides that she ' s dating Randy and one of her friends is Cherry Valence . While nothing explicitly bad is ever shown about Marcia , she ' s still a poorly written character with not much personality . We only learn one thing about her personality that is directly said : " Both [ Two-Bit and Marcia ] had the same scatterbrained sense of humor " ( Hinton 35 ). Having a scatterbrained sense of humor doesn ’ t make up for having a 2d personality , but S . E . Hinton didn ’ t seem to care . In fact , she cared so little that Marcia is only seen in chapter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3 , and never seen again . Her name is only said twice in the book after she left with Randy and Bob--Once as a form of reminding readers what had happened earlier in the book , and once as letting readers know that she ' s Randy ' s girlfriend . If anything , Marcia is just a convenient plot device who is hidden as a bubbly teenage girl with nothing to her . Even though she ' s never portrayed negatively outright , her lack of character makes her seem boring at best and useless at worst .