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.
Themes
The Foundations of Friendship
Over the course of the novel, Joyce explores how shared experiences inspire and strengthen friendship. Joyce initially portrays Margery and Enid as too different in personality and opinion to ever become friends, and Margery even rejects the idea of a relationship between them when she refuses to even interview Enid for the role of her assistant. The two women’s education, social class, and outlook on life diverge sharply, emphasized by Joyce’s descriptions of their physical dissimilarity. Margery recognizes herself in the caricature her students have drawn of “a lumpy old woman” in a “baggy suit” with a nose like a “potato” and hair like “a mad bird’s nest” (11). By contrast, in Enid’s first appearance she is first described as a “blond bombshell” wearing “a bright pink two-piece travel suit that accentuated her round bust and hips” with “nails […] painted like juicy sweets” (41).
Joyce immediately establishes Enid as Margery’s foil, but the physical differences between them are only the beginning. Further discord looms because of their personalities. Margery is reserved. Enid is a non-stop talker. Despite one brief stab at romance, Margery keeps men at bay. Enid is sexually liberated, especially by the social standards of 1950 England. Margery is childless by choice. Enid talks of nothing but motherhood. Margery is methodical and orderly. Enid is messy and disorganized. However, once Margery gets over the shock of sharing a three-month expedition with someone who grates on her nerves every moment, she begins to notice just how useful someone like Enid can be. Margery is the planner, but Enid is the implementer. It is Enid who gets them on their ship despite sketchy paperwork. It is also Enid who replaces lost research equipment by raiding a school and supplies transportation by stealing a jeep. When Margery is overwhelmed by the filth of their mountain hovel, Enid springs into action and creates a clean base camp for the two adventurers. Through these shared experiences and small acts of care for one another, the two women establish a tentative companionship that grows into a fierce friendship. Through the arc of their relationship, Joyce suggests that mutual respect is more important than superficial similarities in establishing a friendship.
The most important difference of all between the two women is that Enid is hopeful. She instills that hope in Margery when the latter is ready to give up on her life’s dream. By the end of the novel, Margery learns the meaning of friendship as defined by Joyce: “It was by placing herself side by side with Enid that Margery had finally begun to see the true outline of herself. And she knew it now: Enid was her friend” (215). As Margery’s friendship with Enid facilitates her self-actualization, Joyce posits that true friends lead a person to deeper knowledge and appreciation of themselves.
Embracing One’s Purpose
The beginning of the novel depicts two characters who are unsure how to direct their futures. Enid is fleeing a murder charge, and Margery has just experienced a revelation of dissatisfaction with her life that resulted in the impulsive theft of a pair of athletic boots. Joyce uses these two women to represent others of their post-WWII generation who were unsuited to the traditional domestic roles that women were expected to return to after many women began to work outside the home during wartime. Both Margery and Enid instinctively reach for a purpose in life that is not defined by the expectations of others. Enid sums this up neatly when she says, “Finding the beetle is your life’s work and mine is having a baby. It’s our vocation, Marge. If we don’t do it, we’ll die of sadness. Giving up isn’t an option” (81). In this passage, Joyce explicitly connects self-determination to mental and emotional health.
Margery notes Enid’s odd choice of the word “vocation”, as this word is often associated with a religious calling, implying a special kind of spiritual purpose in the world. Enid has elevated the concept of a life’s work to a holy calling. Acknowledging the spiritual significance of birthing a baby or finding a beetle to an individual removes both ambitions from the realm of the trivial to the realm of the sublime.
While both Margery and Enid answer the call of their vocations, other characters lack the bravery necessary to pursue their dreams, especially when those dreams defy social conventions. The best example is Mrs. Pope. Her dream was to become an actress, but one embarrassing audition was enough to kill her hopes:
And her life, which should have been one of Shakespeare and touring and greasepaint, was a round of cocktail parties and staying thin, and sheer stockings even when the thermometer hit ninety-six […] It wasn’t even that she disliked the two women. Not really. It was that they had found a way to be themselves (300).
Mrs. Pope resents the social conventions she actively participates in, but fails to see that she participates in them by choice. Seeing Margery and Enid make different choices to pursue freedom at the cost of social respectability inspires jealousy and regret in Mrs. Pope, who then attempts to destroy the more independent women. In this dynamic, Joyce explores the possible consequences of following one’s heart, positing that it is not always easy or safe, even if it feels necessary to one’s sense of self. At the very end of the novel, Freya Bartlett seems to be another Mrs. Pope in the making, admitting to her own failure of nerve:
Out of some strange mad desire not to upset the status quo, she’d become complicit. She had laughed when she should have been angry, or said nothing when she should have said a lot. She’d belittled her own achievements, calling them small or unformed or even lucky when they were none of those things (332).
Fortunately, the call of the beetle is strong enough to draw her to New Caledonia as it had called Margery a generation earlier. While Mrs. Pope felt threatened by Margery and Enid, Freya feels inspired. Freya encapsulates the reason for embracing one’s vocation when she says, “But the real failure as a woman was not even to try” (334). In these closing lines, Joyce posits that success or failure in achieving one’s dreams is less important than the continued pursuit and consistent honoring of one’s own identity.
The Effects of Past Trauma
All the central characters in Miss Benson’s Beetle struggle to overcome the traumatic events of their past. They spend a good deal of time literally running away from their emotions and memories, traveling across the world to escape confronting themselves. Over the course of the novel, Joyce indicates that Margery, Enid, and Mundic must each confront their pasts regardless of their location in the world or their efforts to avoid doing so.
Enid’s accepts Margery’s job offer in an effort to avoid the police after helping her husband end his life. Even overseas, Enid is terrified that her past will catch up with her. She scans outdated newspapers for any word about the case and buys a radio for overseas broadcasts, sustaining constant anxiety over the very events she is trying to put behind her. When the news cycle moves on and the police stop pursuing her, Enid still isn’t prepared to let go of her past because she’s dragged along the two pillows that she used to suffocate her husband. She admits, “I don’t know what I was thinking. I just thought everything would be all right, so long as I kept the pillows safe” (257). By keeping the pillows, Enid is also keeping the crime fresh in her mind; she sacrifices her ability to move on for a feeling of control. When Enid confesses to Margery, she is finally able to receive the support and friendship that begin to alleviate her fear.
Margery’s own past affects her choices in the present and inspires her need to flee her unsatisfying life in England. Her emotional repression after the loss of her family separates her from her ambitions, dreams, and sense of self. It is her desire to reclaim her ambition and self-esteem that motivates her to undertake the journey to New Caledonia, thereby enabling her journey to emotional stability as well. Witnessing her father’s death by suicide also left her with a phobia of blood and guns, and she runs from the sight of Enid’s blood-stained skirt after the supposed miscarriage and falls down a flight of stairs. In this instance, Joyce presents a more extreme example of how unresolved trauma can create dangerous situations. Margery is also haunted by the memory of her unrequited love for Professor Smith, describing the “hurt and humiliation” as “like being squeezed into a tin, when you heap your love somewhere so small and thin” (240). Fortunately, Margery finds a way to bury the memory of Smith in Mr. Rawlings’ grave, while her friendship with Enid and the success of her expedition inspire her to overcome her grief and reclaim her sense of self-possession.
Joyce portrays Mundic’s relationship to past trauma as a tragic contrast to Enid and Margery. While Enid and Margery are able to distinguish their past history from the present, Mundic’s war experiences have been so traumatic that his memories bleed over into his everyday life. Joyce describes how, “he didn’t know what to do with the things from the past. He had no idea where you were supposed to put things that existed only inside your head” (249). Mundic is desperate to feel a sense of control over his thoughts and feelings that he becomes obsessed with Margery’s expedition, attempting to co-opt her journey of self-discovery for himself. Although other characters in the novel are able to recognize the deep hurt Mundic displays, they fail to provide the mental, physical, and emotional help that might enable Mundic’s recovery. Instead, Mundic is overwhelmed by his traumatic experiences, becoming a danger to both himself and others.
Through these three characters and their various methods of addressing past trauma, Joyce posits that emotional wounds must be healed intentionally, and with great care for individual needs.
