Good Bad Girl: A Novel

Edith creates the three ladybug rings to symbolize her connection to Clio and the baby Eleanor. Edith chooses the ladybug to represent Eleanor because the child, like the insects, has “spots”—freckles, in Eleanor’s case. Later in the narrative, Edith tells Clio a deeper reason for choosing the ladybug as a familial symbol:

[L]adybugs are so prolific, so determined to ensure their future and protect their legacy, that they sometimes give birth to pregnant ladybugs. Their daughters are born ready to have more daughters. Generation after generation, repeating and reliving the same lives as the last, never changing their spots (190-91).

Per Edith’s explanation, the ladybug symbolizes both the persistent desire to survive and the inheritance of what past generations have experienced. In the case of the women in this family, that inheritance includes trauma, estrangement, and self-loathing. The strangeness—by human standards—of giving birth to a child that is already pregnant also speaks to Reimagining the Expectations of Motherhood. Frankie, for example, is both Patience’s mother and sister—a hybrid relationship that “shouldn’t” be possible and yet works.

At the start of the novel, Patience is reunited with one of the ladybug rings. This begins Patience’s journey toward discovering the truth of her past and healing her relationship with her mother(s).