“The Secret Life of Bees” seen through the prism of race

On the 1st of December 1955 a brave woman named Rosa Parks was sitting on a fully packed bus in Alabama, when a white man stepped onto it, demanding she give up her seat so that he could sit. Rosa Parks refused to listen to neither him nor the bus driver. Today, her refusing to give up her seat wouldn't be a very big deal. At that time, however, it was revolutionary. For a coloured woman not to obey the white man's order was unheard of.
Segregation was throughout the 1950s and the 1960s, a common phenomenon. Coloured people being discriminated and oppressed was part of the daily order. It wasn't until July 2nd 1964 that the Civil Rights Act for blacks was signed, giving them approximately the same rights as whites. But still, even after the Civil Rights Act was signed, the black people in America experienced segregation and discrimination. This is portrayed in the novel “The Secret Life of Bees”.

“The Secret Life of Bees” is a novel written by Sue Monk Kidd, and was published in 2003. The story is set in South Carolina the first few months after the signing of the Civil Rights Act.
At the very beginning of the novel, we meet the fourteen year old girl Lily, who lives with her father T.Ray and their African American housekeeper Rosaleen. The day after the signing of the Civil Rights Act, Rosaleen and Lily go to town so that Rosaleen can sign herself up for voting. This is our first meeting with the cruelty of the discrimination still going on after the Civil Rights Act. “Well, look what we got coming here. Where're you going, nigger?” a white man calls out to Rosaleen. Rosaleen, as the proud black woman she is, answers that she is going to register her name so that she can vote. The three white men keep talking down on Rosaleen, and eventually Rosaleen decides she has had enough, and pours out her snuff juice on the men's shoes. She then receives a vicious beating, and when the police arrives, she is arrested. The policeman claims that she has assaulted the men, that she has stolen something and that she has disturbed the peace. Nothing happens to the three white men who started it all, verbally assaulting Rosaleen, and then beating her. This shows how the Civil Rights Act may have given blacks the right to register to vote and the right not to be segregated in school or at work, but that it hadn't changed neither the people's opinions, nor the legal system. It doesn't even seem like the police officer was intrigued to know what really happened, and without investigating the case, Rosaleen is thrown in jail. It's completely obvious that if Rosaleen were a white person, none of this would have happened.

The fourteen year old girl Lily, manages to sneak Rosaleen out of jail, and together they run away and end up with the Boatwright sisters. The Boatwright sisters are three black sisters who live on a bee farm in Tiburon. Staying with the Boatwright sisters, Lily meets their nephew Zach. A special bond is developed between Zach and Lily, but both of them know that they can't become anything more than friends. And why is that? Because she is white and Zach isn't. The fact that they don't share the same skin colour makes it unacceptable for them to be anything else than friends. The society would never approve of it. A white girl having a relationship with a black boy which was based on more than friendship, was at that time considered wrong and not something that a respectable white person would do. Even being attracted to a Negro was considered unthinkable. “It was foolish to think some things were beyond happening, even being attracted to Negroes. I'd honestly thought such a thing couldn't happen, the way water could not run uphill or salt could taste sweet.” Lily is comparing being attracted to Negroes being as unlikely as water running uphill, something which obviously is impossible. When a fourteen year old girl has that impression on the relationship between the white people and the Negroes, that definitely tells us something about what the consensus of the white people was towards blacks, even after the Civil Rights Act.

Lily is quite surprised when she sees that the Boatwright sisters' statue of the Virgin Mary is black. Lily had never seen the Virgin Mary being black, and neither had she ever in her wildest dreams imagined it.
The statue is constantly being referred to as “Our Lady of Chains”. August explains to Lily that she is called our Lady of Chains not because she wore chains, but because she broke them. The chains can be interpreted as a symbol of how the Negroes has experienced being oppressed and discriminated through slavery. Feeling imprisoned under the white man's ruthless governance. Breaking free from these chains is probably a symbol of the Negroes gaining civil rights and breaking free from their past.

It is very clear that the discrimination of the Negroes didn't disappear after the Civil Rights Act was signed. In The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd manages to portray the race relations in the 1960s very well, and the reader gets a real insight of how it was being on the “coloured side” of the matter. Through Lily we see the “white side”. The fact that these two are mixed together in the story, shows the contrasts between them, and what kind of conflicts arise. Novels like The Secret Life of Bees are very important for us to understand how different it was just 40 years ago. The Secret Life of Bees is a book well worth reading. Race-relations, prejudice, love and forgiveness are just some of the key words here. Sue Monk Kidd has written a novel that tries to give the reader some insight unto the racial issues of the past, and it definitely hits home. The book goes to show how cruel man can be, and how much of our thoughts and meanings are influenced by the ethics and morale of society itself.
It is a good book that has some present use too, as it can also be interpreted as a novel that provides perspective unto how much we are influenced by those people around us.
All in all, I find the book quite interesting and flexible, and I recommend it to anyone who finds the history of discrimination intriguing.