In The Marvellers, Clayton creates a magical world divided by intolerance and prejudice of one magical community against another, paralleling the history of racial injustice and discrimination against communities of color in the United States. Clayton’s analogy foregrounds the inevitable challenges of attempting to integrate a population into a prejudiced majority that derives its power from the oppression of the former. In the world of the novel, Marvellers banded together 300 years earlier to live in the sky, separating themselves from both the non-magical Fewels and the magical Conjurors, whose magic they deem inferior since it’s closely tied to the natural world and the Underworld. In discriminating against Conjurors, Marvellers established a prejudicial ideology that framed Conjurors as both worthy of suspicion and inferior to themselves.

Clayton parallels Ella’s experience as the first Conjuror student admitted to the Arcanum Institute of Marvelling with the historical example of Ruby Bridges—the first Black child to attend a formerly all-white elementary school in New Orleans in 1960. Ruby’s experience was captured in a Norman Rockwell painting, The Problem We All Live With (1963), whose title evokes the challenges inherent in taking concrete steps toward social change. As Ella’s journey progresses, she experiences overt intolerance and hostility, as well as the efforts of those trying to build a bridge of understanding between two very different communities.