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.
Part 2, Chapters 31-42Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Search!”
Part 2, Chapters 31-37 Summary
This summary section includes the chapters entitled “Terrible Business”; “London, December 1950”; “Merry Christmas, Margery Benson”; “January 6, the Three Kings Party”; “We Will Die Here”; “Easy”; and “A Change of Plan.”
Mundic finally arrives in New Caledonia after a month-long crossing. When he gets to the dock, the former POW is overwhelmed by all the sensory stimuli. Unfortunately, he soon gets into a fistfight and lands in jail. The police suspect that he is responsible for the break-in at the Catholic school. The British consul comes to question him but realizes that Mundic only just arrived, so he can’t be the thief. The consul also discovers that Mundic has limited funds, and his paperwork isn’t in order. Feeling pity for the war veteran, the consul agrees to help straighten the matter out and lets Mundic go free.
During the same period, the newspapers in London have a field day with the Collett murder. Nancy Collett was known to have taken several lovers, and the papers depict her in the most lurid possible light. The police have linked her to Margery Benson, a known footwear thief. However, the two women vanished after disembarking from their ship in Australia. The investigative trail has gone cold.
Oblivious to the stir in England, Enid and Margery celebrate a pleasant Christmas holiday in their little hut until Enid finally gets a signal on her overseas radio. What she hears upsets her though she won’t tell Margery why. She cryptically insists that they should be safe if they lay low.
After 10 more days, the women start climbing the mountain again in search of the golden beetle. During this foray, Enid breaks the news that she’s still pregnant and didn’t miscarry on the ship as she first thought. Margery is worried about dragging a pregnant woman on any more trips up the mountain, but Enid insists that she intends to see the expedition through to the end and appeals to Margery’s sense of purpose. Their argument is interrupted by the onset of a cyclone.
Back in Noumea, Mrs. Pope holds her Three Kings Party on January 6 despite the winds and torrential rains. Out of pity, her husband has invited Mundic. Mrs. Pope is unnerved by the war veteran’s odd behavior. During their conversation, Mrs. Pope mentions Margery and Enid. She knows they’ve gone to the little town of Poum to conduct their beetle search. Mundic eagerly writes down this information and leaves abruptly.
Meanwhile, Enid and Margery are stuck halfway up the mountain while the cyclone intensifies. They endure two days of rain, wind, and bitter cold. Enid is convinced she is going to die, and Margery becomes the non-stop talker to keep Enid from giving up. Margery has come to regard Enid as her friend, and she is determined to save them both. She guides Enid down the mountain once the storm breaks. Miraculously, their little hut is still standing. While Enid rests after their ordeal, Margery springs into action to set things to rights, including lancing the infected insect bites on her legs.
While Margery and Enid settle back into their shelter, Mundic manages to find transportation to Poum and stations himself in the jungle outside their hut to keep watch. He notices that Enid is pregnant and considers that she’s unqualified to be Margery’s assistant. Mundic needs to figure out a way to get rid of her.
A few days later, Enid is in much better spirits. The two women decide to drive to the café in Poum, have lunch, and celebrate being alive. Before they leave, Enid insists that Margery dye her hair blond. Margery thinks this makes her look disturbing, but she goes along with the plan.
Margery plans to break some unpleasant news to Enid over lunch. She wants to leave her behind in the hut when she next goes up the mountain. By the end of the meal, Margery realizes that Enid has superstitiously tied the survival of her baby to Margery’s discovery of the beetle, and there will be no convincing her otherwise. Margery decides to let Enid come along despite the risk to her health.
Part 2, Chapters 38-42 Summary
This summary section includes the chapters entitled “Shoes with a Buckle”; “Funeral Stones”; “An Unexpected Development”; “The Connecting Line”; and “Enid’s Red Valise.”
By this stage in their expedition, Margery and Enid have learned how to work together like a well-oiled machine. They manage to collect over 100 rare insect specimens. Even if these aren’t the gold beetle, they would be valuable to an entomologist. Margery revels in her time in the jungle because it feels like home to her. Lately, Mr. Rawlings, Enid’s dog, has taken to barking all the time. One day, he runs off into the jungle, and the women follow him back to their bathing pool, where they enjoy an idyllic nude swim. Once they resume their search for the dog, they find him dead at the bottom of a ravine.
The women retrieve the dog’s body and bury it, and Margery realizes that “Enid had not lost her baby, but she’d lost the nearest thing” at that she “must allow Enid to grieve” (236). The women spend the next day collecting flat stones to pile on top of the grave. During this operation, Margery thinks back to her relationship with Professor Smith. After 10 years of being his unpaid assistant, she worked up the nerve to profess her love for him. Embarrassed, he admitted that he had a wife and children. They then parted ways and never saw each other again. As Margery piles more stones on the dog’s grave, she feels herself burying her own past with Smith. When Enid goes in search of more rocks, she discovers that someone has dug up the revolver that she buried along the trail.
Back in Noumea, Mrs. Pope recalls her conversation with Mundic about the two women collecting beetles in the mountains. She decides to investigate them and learns that two bags have been left at the airline office for them to collect. After retrieving the bags, she finds that one contains equipment similar to what was stolen from the Catholic school. Mrs. Pope believes she has found the culprits and waits eagerly to question them when they return to town.
The story shifts to Mundic, who has been following Margery and Enid during their trips up and down the mountain. Because of this time spent in the jungle, his memories of Burma start to blur with reality. He believes a Japanese soldier is following him and that he is still in the POW camp. Mundic recalls accidentally killing Enid’s dog because it wouldn’t stop barking at him. Before he knew what he’d done, the dog was dead, so he dropped it into the ravine. He also found the gun and added it to the collection of objects in his haversack. Mundic feels an attack of beriberi, a kind of malnutrition, coming on and isn’t sure how much longer he can continue his mission.
It’s now the beginning of February, and Margery and Enid are back at the hut planning to wrap up their trip. One evening, Enid brings out her red valise and confesses her past to Margery. She is wanted for the murder of her husband. She explains that she came home one night and found he had cut his wrists in an attempt to die by suicide. Tormented by phantom pains from his amputated leg, he didn’t want to live anymore and asked her to end his misery, so Enid placed two pillows over his face and suffocated him. She has been carrying the pillows in the red valise ever since.
Enid speculates that the police might not hang a pregnant woman, but Margery says they aren’t going back. She plans to find a way to keep them out of trouble. Realizing that they can’t return to Noumea, Margery concocts a scheme to raise money overseas by selling her property in London and her insect collection. They will find a way to disappear.
Part 2, Chapters 31-42 Analysis
This set of chapters explores the theme of embracing one’s calling. Margery’s plans are disrupted by Enid’s announcement that she is still pregnant. Because she might successfully carry a baby to term, Enid is invested in fulfilling her destiny. At the same time, she becomes even more insistent that Margery fulfill her own vocation of finding the golden beetle. Ironically, Margery sees the fulfillment of Enid’s dream as the death of her own. She doesn’t feel right about dragging a pregnant woman up and down a mountain. Nevertheless, the two vocations become fused to one another in Enid’s mind. She is convinced that she can’t have her baby unless Margery finds her beetle. Enid appeals to Margery’s newfound independence, bravery, and unconventionality, saying:
Margery Benson, where is the woman who stole a pair of boots? Who organized an expedition to the other side of the world? Who put on a man’s shorts? This is your vocation same as mine is having a baby. You think you can just walk away? (202)
The merging of their vocations reinforces the bonds of friendship that have gradually formed between the two. Ultimately, Enid confesses her criminal past to Margery because she trusts her completely now. Evincing her character growth, Margery doesn’t react to this disclosure with fear or indignation as she might once have done. The old Margery would have turned Enid in to the authorities. The new Margery will move heaven and earth to protect her friend and quickly makes plans for their escape.
This segment also shows external forces taking shape that will challenge the bonds of friendship between the two women. Mundic, still pursuing his obsession, has arrived on the island and is stalking Margery. After the measure of relief he found while distracted on the sea journey, the return to the jungle aggravates his PTSD from being a POW in Burma. His antipathy toward Enid suggests that he might not hesitate to kill her, since he had no trouble killing her pet. Another threat to both women arrives in the form of Mrs. Pope. In her determination to solve the trivial crime of the Catholic school break-in, she stumbles upon the much bigger crime of the Collett murder in London. As a guardian of the status quo, Mrs. Pope cannot let this violation of the law go unpunished. As the rising action of the novel approaches the climactic confrontation with past traumas and present threats, Joyce places the now unified women in opposition to both social and criminal forces.
