Miss Benson's Beetle

The golden beetle of New Caledonia is the novel’s dominant symbol. It appears in the book’s title and is introduced as an entomologist’s treasure from the very first pages, emphasized by the beetle’s golden color and jewel-like appearance. The idea of an undiscovered beetle captures Margery’s interest when she is only 10 years old:

Until that moment she’d assumed everything in the world was already found. It had never occurred to her things might happen in reverse. That you could see a picture of something in a book—that you could as good as imagine it—and then go off and look (4).

The beetle speaks to the theme of pursuing one’s vocation. Margery identifies the insect as her purpose in life almost immediately after glimpsing a picture of it for the first time, but soon becomes distracted by the circumstances of life. At many points in the book, Margery views her obsession with the beetle as an absurdity, as see feels pressure to be sensible and uphold the status quo; Joyce presents the path of conformity as always less troublesome than following a vocation, which can be fraught with pain and difficulty. Enid reminds Margery “Your vocation is not your friend. It’s not a consolation for someone you lost once, or even a way of passing the time.