“Coming of Age”
Do you ever wonder how much you have changed in the past year? Not just physically, but in every aspect. Lily Owens in The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd matures throughout the novel. Lily Owens matures because of her spiritual development. Also, she matures because of her social consciousness and her relationship with Zach. Sue Monk Kidd portrays the theme “coming of age” as difficult in The Secret Life of Bees. The first example of Lily’s coming of age is in her spiritual development. She is introduced to the Daughters of Mary, who connect her to the Black Madonna. When Lily first sees the Black Madonna, she thought that:
“She was black as she could be, twisted like driftwood from being out in the weather, her face a map of all the storms and journeys she’d been through. Her right arm was raised, as if she was pointing the way, except her fingers were closed in a fist. It gave her a serious look, like she could straighten you out if necessary” (Kidd 70).
Lily thinks that the Black Madonna knows her “down to the core” (70), meaning she knows the real reason why she and Rosaleen came to Tiburon. Before meeting the Boatwrights,
…show more content…
Zach wants to be a lawyer and tells Lily that it is hard to become one because he is African American. Lily’s feelings for Zach introduce a new conflict in the story. She finds herself thinking of him often. She tries to convince herself that she should get over him by thinking, “That’s what I told myself five hundred times: impossibility. I can tell you this much: the world is a great big log thrown on the fires of love” (133). The point of love confuses her because she feels as if she has not experienced any love except from Rosaleen. She starts having a negative outlook on love and how it destroys the world. In the end, she comes to realize that she has many people that love
Most runaway youth are homeless because of neglect, abuse and violence, not because of choice. Lily Owens is the protagonist in the novel, Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, is no different. Lily is a fourteen year-old girl still grieving over her mother's death. T. Ray a man who has never been able to live up to the title of a father, due to years of abuse, has not made it any easier. Lily is a dynamic character who in the beginning is negative and unconfident. However, throughout the novel Lily starts to change into the forgiving person she is at the end.
In life, actions and events that occur can sometimes have a greater meaning than originally thought. This is especially apparent in The Secret Life Of Bees, as Sue Monk Kidd symbolically uses objects like bees, hives, honey, and other beekeeping means to present new ideas about gender roles and social/community structures. This is done in Lily’s training to become a beekeeper, through August explaining how the hive operates with a queen, and through the experience Lily endures when the bees congregate around her.
People share their secret lives without even talking about them. It only takes a glance or feeling to see that others have faced similar situations and problems, some people even live parallel lives. Despite the fact that many people believe it impossible for a measly insect, like a bee, to know the pain hardships a human faces, Sue Monk Kidd proves them wrong with her book The Secret Life of Bees. In her novel she derives many of her characters from the types of bees that exist in a hive. Lily and Zach have characteristic that are akin to that of field bees, August has that nurturing personality of a nurse bee, and the Lady of Chains is revered by her subjects just like a Queen bee is by her hive. Nowadays, no one ever faces a problem that someone, or something, has already faced. No one really has a secret life all to themselves.
Fancy wardrobes, extravagant parties, and endless gossip makes up much of their lives. Even though she doesn’t have an abundance of money, Lily manages to keep pace with her friends. When Bertha lies about her and spreads the untrue news that she had had an affair with George, Lily’s life changes dramatically. She finds it hard to get a job, and she begins running out of money. One of her old friends, Mrs. Fisher, eventually apologizes for being so rude after the cruise and agrees to help her to find a way to make a living. Lily works with one of Mrs. Fisher’s friends for a while, but then Bertha befriends Lily’s employer and causes Lily to quit her job. Lily makes one final attempt at getting job with a woman named Mrs. Hatch. That arrangement goes well until Lily unknowingly gets involved in a scandal of sorts and is forced to quit that job, too. Lily’s last option is to join the working class of New York. She begins working as a hat maker but is unable to keep her job due to her lack of
I really was impacted by T. Ray’s quote during the height of the tension about Lily’s past mistakes, “ ‘It was you who did it, Lily. You didn’t mean it, but it was you’ ” (Kidd 299). This moment was one of my favorites because it showed the growth the lead character had made toward not only forgiving her mother, but forgiving herself. When Lily chases after her father to finally get the raw truth about the fateful day her mom died, it reveals that she is finally ready to come to terms with her past, no matter what really happened. At the beginning of the book, she can’t accept her mother’s death, her disappearance, and her lack of love from her parents. Coincidentally, she grasps at any excuse to punish herself because she is unsure of who she is.
A poignant and touching classic, The Secret Life of Bees details the coming of age stories of a young girl named Lily. Her life up until the start of the novel was hard, she was friendless with an abusive father and a heavy conscience, as she believes that she is responsible for her mother’s death. Lily’s only solace is her stand-in-mother, a black woman named Rosaleen, so when Rosaleen is hauled to jail for standing up for herself, Lily decided to run away to a mysterious town that has some linkage to her mother. Her escapades lead her to three, wonderful, eclectic, devout followers of Mary, and to a new life. As the story unfolds, an elaborate symbol lies hidden just beneath the surface, one that seems so obvious, but only lies as a hidden
In The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd Lily has assumptions, biases, and prejudices about race that are changing over the course of the novel.
Lily’s idea of home is having loving parent/mother figures who can help guide her in life. Because of this desire, she leaves T. Ray and begins to search for her true identity. This quest for acceptance leads her to meet the Calendar Sisters. This “home” that she finds brightly displays the ideas of identity and feminine society. Though Lily could not find these attributes with T. Ray at the peach house, she eventually learns the truth behind her identity at the pink house, where she discovers the locus of identity that resides within herself and among the feminine community there. Just like in any coming-of-age story, Lily uncovers the true meaning of womanhood and her true self, allowing her to blossom among the feminine influence that surrounds her at the pink house. Lily finds acceptance among the Daughters of Mary, highlighting the larger meaning of acceptance and identity in the novel.
Heart break, joy, love, happiness, The Book The Secret Life of Bees has it all! The book is about a young girls that accidentally shot her mother. After spending nine years with her abusive, and emotionally absent father, she decides to run away. So, she breaks her beloved nanny out of prison, and Lily escapes to Tiburon South Carolina, a town she links to her mother through the writing on one of her old possessions. While in Tiburon, Lily finds the calendar sisters three very different, very helpful sisters. The family agrees to take Lilly in, despite the fact that almost every white person in town frowns upon the very idea of this white girl staying in an African American household. While staying with the sisters, August, May, and June, Lily learns lots of things, ranging from bee keeping, to why and how her mother first left her. She falls in love, explores her past, and finds it within herself to forgive her mother for leaving her, and herself, for shooting her mom. This book is rich in both emotion, and culture.
The Secret Life of Bees delineates an inspirational story in which the community, friendship and faith guide the human spirit to overcome anything. The story follows Lily Owens, a 14 year old girl who desperately wants to discover the cause of her mothers death. Her father T. Ray gives her no answers, which leads their maid, Rosaleen, to act as her guardian. Together, Lily and Rosaleen run away to Tiburon, South Carolina and find a welcoming community. It is in Tiburon that Lily learns many life lessons, including many about herself. In her novel The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd explores a theme of spiritual growth through Lily's search for home as well as a maternal figure.
The character who changed the most in the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, was Lily Owens. Firstly, Lily’s change stems from her abnormal relationship with T. Ray. T. Ray abuses Lily. Sue Monk Kidd writes when Lily is punished with grits, “I swayed from knee to knee, hoping for a second or two of relief, but the pain cut deep into my skin” (24). This punishment physically hurt Lily, and aided to the constant physical abuse performed by T. Ray. From the beginning of Lily’s life, she is afraid of doing wrong to avoid horrible punishments. Therefore, Lily believed that she is unloved. Secondly, Lily’s actions motivated change. The moment when Lily finally told August Boatwright the startling truth about her past, is the moment she learns to trust
The Life of Lily Bart in The House of Mirth, is controlled by a combination of fate and luck, and her own conflicting goals. Lil’s inability to compromise with a series of unfortunate events leads to her untimely death. In the passage, Edith Wharton cleverly chooses her words when writing, so the words reflect a bigger situation. She uses small sections of the novel as a microcosm of the larger book. Some of her words carefully foreshadow what might come further in the book. In this particular passage Wharton allows Lily to predict and realize her own fate. Using a combination of the subtle language and microcosms Edith Wharton manages to reflect on Lily’s life.
Lily has a lot of mother figures in her life. In ?The Secret Life of Bees? two mother figures that she has are Rosaleen and August. A mother cares for her young and guides them trough life. She comforts and soothes them when they need it. Lily?s Mothers are Rosaleen and August. Both act as mothers for Lily in different ways.
Knowing what she did she is trying to fight her prejudicism, and realizes the truth about the irrationality of racism. June also has to overcome the racial stereotypes. Later into the novel, Lily begins to have feelings for Zach but encounters her own prejudice. As described in the book, Zach is a handsome smart boy. As a child from Sylvan, Lily is taught, from racial schoolchildren, that a African American boy cannot be handsome because of his facial features and being “different”. When she realizes that the schoolchildren are wrong her feelings for Zach grow more and more each day and discovers that the ignorant children missed something. While she is trying to overcome her prejudicism, she forgets the difficulties is she were to date zach. Zach also knows that it would be difficult to date in the racist South of that time. They both realized that racism is harmful, but they realized it for different reasons. They do work together to overcome the racism through they're
Lily has to leave her natal family whom she grew up with to live with her husband who will later make the pain feel worth it.