Female Comradery In The Secret Life Of Bees

Female comradery is one of the strongest connections any group of women can have with one another. In Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Secret Life of Bees, Lily Owens is a fourteen-year-old girl living on the outskirts of Sylvan, South Carolina in 1964. Her mother is not in her life, as she has been accidentally shot by Lily when Lily was just four years old. She lives with her abusive father, T-Ray, who is still mourning the loss of his wife, Deborah, and his feelings and own issues carry over to how he treats Lily. He verbally and physically abuses her, shouting at her or making her kneel on grits until her knees swell up. The only female companion Lily has is Rosaleen, a black woman who is the nanny that watches over Lily at T-Ray’s house. At
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Nonetheless, it is still incredibly powerful. Lily craves for her mother’s companionship and love every day. Some nights, she can’t fall sleep because her mind is racing about her mother. She wonders what her life would be like if her mother were still alive. She knows she has missed out on certain feminine teachings a mother and daughter should have with one another, like picking out the dress for her wedding day, or learning to walk in high heels. To always remember her, Lily has a collection of her mother’s things that she keeps in a bag, and she “wondered what it had been like to be inside her, just a curl of flesh swimming in her darkness, the quiet things that has passed between us” (Kidd 171). Lily longs for the days of when she was just a tiny baby that hadn’t even been born yet when she and her mother had such an intimate personal connection to one another. She wants to know what it is like to have a mother who guides their children through life, as she has not had one herself. Her mother’s possessions are priceless to her, as they are the only remains she has of her mother’s legacy. Lily’s relationship with her mother helps her get away from all the negatives that are going on in her life. Whether it be T-Ray’s abuse or her feelings of how she feels about herself, she can always turn to her mother’s things and be free with the thoughts of her mother almost being with