The Secret Life of Bees was written by Sue Monk Kidd. It's an emotional story about a little girl in search of her mothers past, but along the way she discovers herself and who she really is. It's based in 1964 in South Carolina. A little girl named Lilly runs away from her abusive father to follow her mothers footsteps in order to discover her past.
After escaping from her father, Lilly and Rosaleen(Lilly's nanny) came across a general store. In that store was a row of honey jars. All of which had a picture of a black Virgin Mary. The exact same as the one left by her mother. This led them to the bright pink house where August, June, and May resides. Apon meeting August, Lilly lied in order to keep August from calling the police and to allow her and Rosaleen to live with them until everything calmed down. Once Lilly told August her real name, August knew everything else she had said was a lie, but continued to go along with her for the duration of the novel.
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A couple weeks went by before Lilly met the three sisters religious group known as The Daughters of Mary. The members consist of Queenie, Violet, Lunelle, Cressie, Mabelee, and Sugar-Girl. All of which accepts Lilly into their group with open arms. During their meetings, they pray to a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary and put their hands on the heart painted onto the statue. During the first meeting Lilly attends, she faints and August cares for her until she wakes
In American writer Sue Monk Kidd's fiction novel The Secret Life of Bees, the reader is introduced to Lily Owens, a naive and unfortunate character longing for her mother's absence. Growing up with an abusive father, T Ray, Lily is kept miserable until a stroke of confidence allows her to run away with the only person on her side, Rosaleen. Through multiple influences and revelations of truth, she can develop individually with the help of her new family, the Boatwrights, transforming her into a profound and confident character. One of the major influences Lily undergoes throughout the book is the religious rituals August and the Boatwrigts assign her. An example of this is the observance of a religious statue, The Black Mary, worshiped by the
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a book about a lost girl, who only seeks to learn more about her mother by traveling to the place she truly believes she will find answers, Tiburon, South Carolina. Her journey to find her long-awaited answers begins with her father and ends with August, the oldest of the Boatwright sisters. She hears various stories all of which form an idea in Lily’s mind of who her mother was. Of course, there were some details that Lily didn’t want to hear, but it was apart of her journey. Each and every single answer that she receives is unique and describes who Deborah was in different ways.
What do bees have to do with a young girl enduring a most unfortunate family situation living in the south? Fourteen year old Lily is painfully aware that her cruel father doesn’t care about her. She longs for her loving mother who she vaguely remembers was always there to take care of her. Her ignorance of any other way of life causes her to despair of all hope. In the book The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd the main character, Lily is torn between experience of her painful family situation with an abusive father; ignorance of her mother and a better life available to her.
With love, we can be accepted into a community, or accept ourselves. During a religious procedure where everyone gets to touch the black Mary’s heart, Lily states, “June kept playing while each of them came, until there was only Rosaleen and me left. May nodded to June to keep on with the music,” (Kidd 111). The Black Mary itself symbolizes maternal figures, representing strength and guidance. The Daughters of Mary put their belief and trust in Black Mary to guide them, shown by them touching her heart.
Captured by a man who seem to be like a normal and well kept a man you would never suspect that he kidnapped so many girls. Clover chose a girl who lives in the streets and have families that don’t care about them. That’s how he chose his perfect flowers. They four perfect flower were trapped in a cellar with no way to contact the outside world.
A World of Love “People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It’s that hard. If God said in plain language, ‘I’m giving you a choice, forgive or die,’ a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin.” (Kidd 277) Rough times and struggles are simply a part of life- something everyone is to endure.
“Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance” -Samuel Johnson. This quote encompasses one of the underlying and pivotal concepts that I have learned this semester. This is the idea of perseverance. Perseverance has various forms and it shows up in every single book we have read this semester. I think that this quality is crucial to progress in both physical and spiritual life.
“A wonderful novel about mothers and daughters and the transcendent power of love” (Connie May Fowler). This quote reflects the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd because the protagonist in the story, Lily Owens, her mother have died when she was four years old and she didn’t feel loved by her abusive father, T. Ray Owens, until she met the Boatwrights family with the housekeeper, Rosaleen, and stayed with them. The Boatwrights family are the three black sisters who are August, May, and June. This novel took place in Sylvan and Tiburon, South Carolina, where Lily grew up and where she found the answer to her questions.
Ray is at work one day, Lily sneaks out of the house to go and free Rosaleen. Freeing Rosaleen was not as easy as Lily thought it was going to be, but she manage to get it accomplished. Rosaleen and Lily decided to hitchhike to Tiburon, South Carolina, because she found a picture of Deborah's that had Tiburon written on the back. When they arrive at Tiburon, Lily finds the exact picture of Mary on honey jars in a grocery store. Lily finds out from the person working at the store that the honey belongs to the Boatwright sisters, a local black family of sisters.
Their father convinced a French guard to let their whole family stay together because their mother was ill from tuberculosis. Days later, her and her younger sister convinced French guard to let them go to the hospital with their mother. That was the last time they ever saw their father and older sister. At the hospital they convinced another guard to let them go outside, where their grandparents picked them up and put them into hiding for years, sometimes going for days without food.
The roses continues for generations, very similar to a family possession. Another symbol she uses is the street name in which Miss Strangeworth lives
The Secret Lives of People The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, is an interesting story that connects human lives to bees. The story takes place in 1964 during the Civil Rights Movement and fourteen year-old Lily Owens leaves her abusive father and her home in Sylvan, South Carolina to go to Tiburon with hopes to find information on her mother. Throughout the story, Lily struggles with many internal conflicts and also meets several mother figures along the way.
Throughout The Secret Life of Bees bees play a recurring role in the novel, repeatably being mentioned during the novel in epigrams before the start of each chapter and within the story itself. Unfortunately, on certain occasions the reason why bees are included in a certain part of the story can be unclear and confusing to readers, causing them to occasionally misinterpret the importance of bees throughout the novel. Regardless, the bees throughout play a very important role in understanding many of the themes and symbolism that Kidd included within the novel. In The Secret Life of Bees Kidd symbolizes Lily’s experiences and situations through the bees frequently present in the novel to show that seemingly different things can function in the same way.
“The queen, for her part, is the unifying force of the community; if she is removed from the hive, the workers very quickly sense her absence. After a few hours, or even less, they show unmistakable signs of queenlessness.” Page 1 The metaphor is meant to compare the loss of a queen bee to the loss of Lily’s mother. Lily’s family was bound together by her mother, as the hive is with their queen bee.
In the tent they would teach Dinah the religion of their mother and in other women’s red tents she would learn how to be a midwife. The tent represents the bond that Dinah and all other women have because of the danger and peace they could feel in the tent. When the women gathered in the tent they would speak of their past and their mother’s past. While in the red tent Dinah would listen to her mothers as they explained their lives and the stories of their mother. “The other reason women wanted daughters was to keep their memories alive.”