Miss Benson's Beetle

“Her father nodded. ‘I have begun to feel comforted,’ he said, ‘by the thought of all we do not know, which is nearly everything.’”

Margery’s father articulates an idea that later drives her to find the golden beetle. She is attracted to the notion of discovering something that few people have seen. This quest later opens her up to an appreciation of all the other undiscovered wonders in the cosmos. 

“No one meant to hurt her. In fact, they meant the opposite—they meant to spare her from shame—but it was like passing through a bewitched land, a place without signposts or boundaries where everyone was asleep but her.”

Margery recalls her isolated childhood in her aunts’ home. She has been conditioned to a solitary existence and this sense of loneliness makes it very difficult for her to relate to Enid; eventually, Margery learns that at least one other person in her world is also awake. 

“She went out looking all the time, and it was amazing, once you started, how easy they were to find. No matter what she was doing, beetles were always in her thoughts […] Beetles she understood. It was people who had become strange.”

Witnessing warfare and the deaths of family members at a very early age has taught Margery that the human world is irrational and violent. The world of nature is much more orderly by comparison. This comparison indicates how Margery’s passion for entomology is both separate from and informed by her past.