45 pages • 1 hour read
Rachel JoyceMiss Benson's Beetle
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Parts 3-4, Chapters 43-54Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “Hunted!” - Part 4: “Freya”
Part 3, Chapters 43-48 Summary
This summary section includes the chapters entitled: “Victoria, You Are Getting Carried Away”; “Who Knew There Was So Much Blood”; “Snakes”; “Tiny Thing of Wonder”; “Beetles and Eyes”; and “Sanctuary.”
At the next gathering of the craft circle, Mrs. Pope shares her views about the two beetle-hunting women. She believes they are Nancy Collett and the headless woman from the police photograph. The rest of the group discourages her from pursuing the inquiry. They’ve already been made laughingstocks of the community for crocheting space rockets for the local orphans that looked like condoms. No one wants to back Mrs. Pope in her latest folly. Nevertheless, she goes to the French police and tells them about her suspicions. The police agree to drive up to Poum and try to find the women.
Back at the hut, Enid unexpectedly goes into labor. It takes two harrowing days, during which Margery is on the brink of fainting from the sight of blood, but Enid finally gives birth. Margery realizes that Enid has “fulfilled her vocation” and is awed by “What a monumental vocation it was” (277), recognizing Enid’s desire to be a mother as equal to her own aspirations.
That night, fast asleep, Enid and Margery fail to notice headlights coming up the road. They also don’t realize that Mundic is wandering around outside, hallucinating. He staggers in front of the police car, disoriented. A policeman steps out to check his papers, which are in order. When Mundic is asked in French if there is a hut up the hill, he doesn’t understand the question and replies, “No.” He also says no when asked if he’s seen two European women in the area. Dismissing Mrs. Pope’s theory as ridiculous, the policeman drives back to Noumea without investigating any further.
In the days that follow, Margery grows very attached to Enid’s new baby. Enid has decided to call her child Gloria and gives her the surname of Benson, after Margery. Although Gloria is doing well, Enid grows feverish. At first, Margery thinks she will recover, but her condition only worsens. Finally, Margery makes the decision to load Enid and Gloria into the jeep and go in search of a doctor. Even though Margery doesn’t know how to drive, she takes the wheel and heads back to Noumea.
By this time, Mundic has recovered enough to creep up to the hut and investigate. The occupants are gone. He inspects everything and is angry to find Margery’s insect collection, proof that she didn’t need him to lead her expedition. He is on the point of smashing her exhibits when he hears village boys outside. He begins to hallucinate again and runs from the hut.
When Margery reaches Noumea, she decides against seeking help from the British consul. Instead, she remembers a woman she met months earlier at the consulate reception. Her name is Dolly Wiggs, and her home becomes a sanctuary for Margery and Enid. Dolly arranges for a doctor to come to her house, who tends to Margery’s insect bites and removes the bit of infected placenta causing Enid’s illness.
Dolly protects the visitors from scrutiny and doesn’t tell Mrs. Pope or anyone else about them. She even agrees to find a buyer for the insect collection. Margery wants to abandon her beetle hunt permanently, but Enid talks her out of it, insisting that Margery “must not betray” her vocation (297), as it transcends Margery’s grief and is part of her innate identity.
When Dolly goes to the market later that day for provisions, she encounters Mrs. Pope, who grows suspicious at the quantity of food that Dolly buys. It takes very little prodding for Dolly to reveal the truth about her houseguests.
Part 3, Chapters 49-53 Summary
This summary section includes the chapters entitled: “Mrs. Pope”; “No, I Am Not Traveling by Mule”; “London, February 1951”; “Living Jewels”; and “Almost There.”
Mrs. Pope marches back home to place two overseas calls, intending to report Margery and Enid to the authorities as the murderess and her accomplice. She pauses for a moment to think about the life she’d planned for herself as an actress instead of the wife of a diplomat, but fear had stopped her. Mrs. Pope realized that “It wasn’t even that she disliked the two women. Not really. It was that they had found a way to be themselves” (300). This thought stirs Mrs. Pope’s resentment, so she forges ahead with her calls to the French police and the London Times.
Dolly returns home in time to warn Margery and Enid that Mrs. Pope is hot on their trail. They tear out of town in the jeep. Another cyclone has recently struck the island, and many roads are washed out. Margery dodges two police blockades that are redirecting traffic. She eventually finds a way into the mountains, but a flooded river separates her car from the road on the other side. A group of local boys with mules offers to get the jeep and the women across. Margery, motivated most of all to save Gloria, “[agrees] to mount a mule” (307).
The women eventually work their way back to Poum. They persuade the local café owner to get them off the island by boat in 24 hours. That evening, Margery and Enid sit on the veranda and make plans for the future. Enid suggests they go to Borneo because it must have plenty of undiscovered beetle species.
Despite all the flurry of activity in New Caledonia, by February of 1951, the Collett murder is old news in London. Enid’s brother-in-law revealed a letter from her husband describing his intention to end his life, and although “It didn’t exonerate [Enid…] she couldn’t be described as cold and calculating anymore” (312). People in England are tired of the war, of rationing, of violence, and of looking back in time. They want to look forward to the upcoming Festival of Britain. When Mrs. Pope places her call, the newspapers choose to ignore the story.
By the next afternoon, Margery and Enid have packed up and are preparing to leave. Margery decides to take one more run up the mountain to enjoy the view. On the way back down, she finds herself swathed in mist and sits down to wait until it clears. As it does, she finds herself surrounded by golden beetles. One lands on her wrist, “As if by magic” (317), and Margery admires it, awe-struck. There are hundreds of them, and many more land on her skin and clothing, but Margery has no desire to collect a specimen. She simply feels blessed to have found her beetle at last. She imagines her entire deceased family rejoicing alongside her.
When Margery returns to the hut at dusk, she finds Mundic there, mildly delirious. Enid is frozen in terror, clutching Gloria. Mundic wants Margery to read the journal he’s been keeping of the expedition. He also has Taylor’s gun in his hand and says that it’s time to finish things. Before he can shoot anyone, Enid comes up from behind and hits him with a frying pan. He grapples with her and sends her flying out the door and off the veranda.
Margery tackles him, and the two engage in a vicious fight. Mundic attempts to place the gun in his own mouth, but Margery prevents him from pulling the trigger. They exchange more blows until Mundic falls backward, breaking his neck. Margery rushes outside and finds that Enid is dead too; her head struck a rock when Mundic pitched her off the veranda. Margery tries unsuccessfully to revive her. She is too grief-stricken to move until she hears Gloria crying. Margery realizes that she needs to save herself and the baby for Enid’s sake.
Part 4, Chapter 54 Summary: “The Golden Beetle of New Caledonia, 1983”
The story skips forward to 1983. Over the years, the Natural History Museum has periodically received specimens of unknown beetle species from an anonymous donor. The anonymous donor calls the first one Sphaeriusidus enidprettyi. Freya Bartlett, the only female entomologist on staff, is intrigued by these donations. She is a middle-aged workaholic who has been repeatedly passed over for promotion and has been complicit in creating a drab life for herself enabling the careers of her male colleagues.
When she opens the most recent anonymous donation, she finds a photograph of a young woman and her elderly assistant; they are a grown-up Gloria and Margery, though Freya does not know their names. Gloria holds a beetle in her hand, and the back of the photograph identifies it as the golden beetle of New Caledonia. Freya’s imagination is inspired by the possibility of discovering this insect. She immediately starts hatching plans for an expedition to New Caledonia. Although Freya “[doesn’t] know how she was going to get there, or when”, she decides that “the real failure as a woman was not even to try” (334).
Parts 3-4, Chapters 43-54 Analysis
In the last segment of the novel, both Enid and Margery fulfill their respective vocations. Enid survives an agonizing two-day delivery to achieve her dream of motherhood. Margery is inspired by her friend’s success, though her concern for Enid and Gloria nearly leads her to abandon her own ambitions. Enid insists that Margery’s vocation in an unconditional part of her identity, and ironically it is only when Margery has stopped looking for the beetle that she finds it. On her last trip up the mountain to admire the view, she is covered in hundreds of the tiny insects. Significantly, she no longer wants to capture and kill one to win the approval of other entomologists. She simply revels in the experience of having discovered the living creature at all. Her sense of wonder at life itself exceeds her clinical need to label a specimen for the Natural History Museum. In this moment, Margery transcends her past traumas to achieve a moment of self-actualization and full contentment with her life, found on her own terms. The tranquility of this moment contrasts with the typical generic conventions of adventure stories in these chapters, including near misses with the police, Mundic, and Mrs. Pope.
While the bond of friendship between Margery and Enid is fully formed at this stage in the story, a role reversal has taken place. It is Margery who springs into action to help deliver Enid’s baby. She is also the one who drives the jeep to save them when Mrs. Pope tries to apprehend them. Margery also grapples with Mundic in the climactic showdown, metaphorically grappling with her own past as she attempts to prevent Mundic, a war veteran like her brothers, from dying in the same manner as her father. Margery was too young and small to prevent her father’s death, but she does succeed in keeping Mundic from killing himself. In doing so, she overcomes her fear of both bloodshed and guns and demonstrates how much she has healed from her past traumas. The loss of Enid is a painful one for Margery, but unlike previous losses in her life, Margery is able to rely on her inner strength and new sense of purpose to move forward with baby Gloria. The magnitude of Margery’s journey to self-discovery is emphasized by Mrs. Pope’s jealousy. Joyce closes Mrs. Pope’s arc ironically, as she is undermined by the very social conventions she seeks to use against Enid and Margery.
The final chapter of the book examines the theme of vocation over a lifetime by skipping forward three decades. In the novel’s denouement, a now elderly Margery and an adult Gloria beckon from a photograph and invite another middle-aged woman to go on an adventure and redefine her sense of self. As Margery did in 1950, Freya Bartlett answers the call in 1983 because she, too, finds her vocation in the shape of a tiny golden beetle.
