This novel has ended in what I would consider a half cliffhanger. I personally feel as though there are still some questions that are left unanswered. But, there is also the big question of is The Beetle really dead? The book clearly makes it up to be as though it is dead.
“Scattered all over it were pieces of what looked like partially burnt rags, and fragments of silk and linen. I have those fragments now. Experts have assured me that they are actually neither silk nor linen! but of some material—animal rather than vegetable—with which they are wholly unacquainted. On the cushions and woodwork—especially on the woodwork of the floor—were huge blotches,—stains of some sort…Some maintain that the stain was produced by human blood, which had been subjected to a great heat, and, so to speak, parboiled” (Marsh, 318-319).
There is even mention from another article that clearly mentions that The Beetle is dead and adds what The Beetle represents in real life. “It’s certainly possible, and convincing, to read the ending of the novel as in fact destabilizing those conservative hierarchies of gender, race, sexuality, and culture implicit in the imperialist/heteronormative project” (Harris, 343). This makes the reader start to consider everything all over again replacing The Beetle with each one of those possibilities that it is representing.
“No wonder, then, that the 1880s and 1890s saw a surge of gothic fiction paranoiacally
concerned with the disintegration of identity into bestiality, the loss of British identity through overpowering foreign influence, the vulnerability of the empire to monstrous and predatory sexualities, and the death of humanity itself in the twilight of everything” (Jones 65).
This gets into the idea that maybe The Beetle isn’t dead because in today’s day and age we are still fighting for the rights of gender, race, sexuality, and culture. This closely relates to the quote below from the book because it does make you think about where we are in the stage of “the creature.”
“What became of the creature who all but did her to death; who he was—if it was a “he,” which is extremely doubtful; whence he came; whither he went; what was the purport of his presence here,—to this hour these things are puzzles” (Marsh, 320).
Sources:
Harris, W.C. and Vernooy, Dawn. “Orgies of Nameless Horrors”: Gender, Orientalism, and the Queering of Violence in Richard Marsh’s The Beetle” https://eng420-s20.uneportfolio.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2155/2022/04/Harris_Vernoy_Orgies-of-Nameless-Horrors_PLL.pdf
Jones, Anna. “Conservation of Energy, Individual Agency, and Gothic Terror in Richard Marsh’s The Beetle, or, What’s Scarier Than an Ancient, Evil, Shape-Shifting Bug?” https://eng420-s20.uneportfolio.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2155/2022/04/Jones_EnergyAgencyTerror.pdf
Marsh, Richard. “The Beetle” file:///home/chronos/u-e21622bed896dc199a148c25879b57a12f2f1562/MyFiles/Downloads/bafykbzacea5cfn2iucvvpifa6t4fbhrxl3atjmqmpejeq5mot6s6r464uvdbw.pdf
