The Secret Life Of Bees

The bestselling novel written by Sue Monk Kidd is a book that has reached out to many individuals all over and in different ways, from those with another background and skin color to those who have lost a parent and been abused. The Secret Life of Bees is a story that almost anyone can relate to in some way or another and the reason why this is a bestselling novel is no surprise. The book is filled with different kinds of emotions like love, confusion, hate and longing making it hard not to like this book.

The book has many strong characters, Lily the 14 year old girl is one of them. Lily Melissa Owens lost her mother when she was four years old when her father T. Ray and her mother Deborah were fighting as Deborah wanted to leave T. Ray. The fighting got out of hand leaving four year old Lily with a gun in her hands, Lily then shot her mother in confusion trying to help her mother while Deborah and T. Ray were fighting. In the book we get to know Lily, as she blossoms from a girl towards becoming a woman. However losing her mother at such a young age makes her unsure and her confidence is low, she wanted to go to a charm school called Woman’s Club to teach how to sit in a chair or how to get into a car, take off gloves or shave legs and apply lipstick. However she never got the chance to go because she didn’t have anyone to present her. Still Lily is a strong girl who has gone through much more than any other girl at her age, living with the thought that she might have killed her mother, which she is very sure of, and her father who has punished her in the hardest ways all the way back since she was six years old. Still she has Rosaleen who is the housekeeper in T. Ray’s house; she helps Lily through everything she might need. Rosaleen is a black woman coming from McClellanville, South Caroline “a woman with a heart more tender than a flower skin despite her sharp ways”. Rosaleen always stands up for Lily making her a wonderful friend and in some way a mother. Still Rosaleen is too stubborn for her own good. She will stand for what she means is right even though it means she will be beaten until she can’t stand on her two feet alone. Knowing that Lily is a girl that is vulnerable and scared with so many emotions she can’t control and Rosaleen who is this woman who will stand up for herself at all time makes them the perfect match to get through life’s tough ups and downs. While reading the book we get to read about the scene where Lily and Rosaleen’s love conquers all oppositions. As Lily and Rosaleen are heading to town a man starts commenting Rosaleen’s skin color and how big she is, making her mad, and as stubborn as she is she pours her sniff jug filled with black spit on the man’s shoe, which at the end leaves her beaten and in jail. After Lily gets home she decides to leave and get Rosaleen out of jail, the bond that Lily and Rosaleen have is shown with such affection in this scene and how a young girl and a woman care for one another and leave to start the journey of their lives.
As the journey continues Rosaleen and Lily get to a restaurant where she lies about visiting her grandmother after seeing the black Madonna honey who is made by August Boatwright a woman who is “almond-buttery with sweat and sun, her face corrugated with a thousand caramel wrinkles and her hair looking flour dusted, but the rest of her seemed decades younger”. After Lily and Rosaleen tell August a lie about how they got here and that her father died in a tractor accident and her mother died when she was little they get to stay at the Boatwright house and work. The bond between Lily and August gets deep and in Lily’s eyes August is intelligent and cultured, and she envies everything she has. Still all the house members aren’t happy for the new members that are going to interfere in their lives and one of them is June Boatwright. She teaches history and English at the colored high school and she loves music. In her spare time she plays cello for dying people, going to their homes and even to hospitals to serenade them into the next life. This makes Lily think that she spends way too much time around death, and that it might be one of the reasons why she is so angry all the time. The last but not least member of the Boatwright family is May Boatwright, May is simpleminded. Not retarded because she is smart in some ways. However she is naive and unassuming, a grown up and a child at the same time with a touch of crazy. She wouldn’t hurt a fly and she always carries small spiders out of the house which reminded Lily of her own bug loving mother.

Meeting all these characters we get to see all the different kind of women, Lily who is weak, yet so strong. Rosaleen who is too stubborn for her own good, August who has the kindest and loving soul of them all, June who is very independent and doesn’t show affection and feeling and who is the total opposite of May who shows every single feeling and who is loving and childish but still grown up in her own way. All these different women who fill in the missing pieces in each other, how they stand up against anything that might come in their way.
Even though race plays a big part in this book the women’s characters overwhelme the book with love and how they all are so different but yet so alike. Their togetherness and bond overdo the fact that there is racism in the world, how this little house keeps everything so calm and together even though there is hate and violence outside.