Thesis on "Secret Life of Bees"

Thesis 5 pages (1851 words) Sources: 5 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Life of Bees

Racial Enlightenment and Maternal Fulfillment in the Secret Life of Bees

The tumultuous period which encapsulated the 1960's brought about widespread public angst and momentous change. With the intensification of the Civil Rights movement, this period would witness the adoption of institutional protections for America's long oppressed, segregated and abused blacks. Even in the midst of this change though, African-Americans continued to suffer cultural hatred, economic exclusion and the internal familial consequences of their continued disadvantages. This is a contradictory time which is well captured in the story of 14-year-old Lily. The protagonist of Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, her innocence helps to channel the confusion of this time through equal parts symbolic journey and historical reality. As Lily comes to find motherhood in the nurturing embrace of various admirable female figures who are all African-American, Kidd paints a portrait of racial bigotry as something irrelevant to humanity. Lily's release from the haunting trauma of her mother's death and her own role in it is facilitated by her simultaneous emergence from the strains of racism into which she was reared.

Kidd effectively portrays the primary characters of her novel with dignity and sensitivity, imposing an inescapable sense of humanity upon individuals absent of racial regard. As the novel is delivered through Lily's perspective, the effect of this is a palpable one. Lily's perspective tends at first to betray a benign but inborn racism, which is highlighted by her initial description of Rosaleen. Here, she tells that the woman who would eventually come to profoundly influence the repair of her haunted life "had a big round face and a body that sloped out from her neck like a pup tent, and she was so black that night seemed to seep from her skin. She lived alone in a little house tucked back in the woods, not far from us, and came every day to cook, clean, and be my stand-in mother. Rosaleen had never had a child herself, so for the last ten years I'd been her pet guinea pig." (Kidd, 2) There is something somewhat abrasive and blunt in Lily's delivery on this point, indicating to some extent that she is aware of the maternal relationship between herself and this woman, but also suggesting something of an emotional distance based on a description that almost borders on the derisive. So is this tone reinforced when she begins the first symbolic discussion on the subject of bees, which will recur throughout the course of the text.

Quite shocking a way to initiate a novel about a young girl, this early scene finds Lily laying in bed and praying for death, picturing that a swarm of bees will descend upon her to hearken the coming of her demise. Attributing the idea to Rosaleen's own declaration, Lily recalls that "bees swarm before death. She (Rosaleen) was full of crazy ideas that I ignored, but I lay there thinking about this one, wondering if the bees had come with my death in mind. Honestly, I wasn't that disturbed by the idea." (Kidd, 2) In addition to introducing Lily as a figure who is deeply conflicted and clearly experiencing the explicit emptiness left both by her mother's death and the fact that she still holds herself as responsible for it, this passage also shows Lily as reflexively looking down upon Rosaleen's 'crazy ideas.' An implicit sentiment of racist condescension seems here present, through the course of the novel, will be softened considerably as Lily finds comfort and love through her immersion into the lives of the African-American women around her,

In addition to the humanizing portrayals which Kidd centers around mother-daughter relationships and a mutual need for compassion, the author employs an array of symbolic devices in order to construct a world of meaning around a girl who begins the novel with these nihilistic tendencies. The result is a character in Lily who formulates meanings and attempts to define the void left by her mother through such representative forms. The most prominent of these in the novel is that of the Black Madonna. By itself a stark reminder that cultural assumptions have placed an unlikely white, European visage on most biblical figures, the Black Madonna takes on greater significance in the context of this story. With the conflicts of the Civil Rights Movement raging in the background of her young life, Lily is absorbed more directly by the conflict concerning the death of her mother. According to the family legend, it was a four-year-old Lily who inadvertently shot her mother to death, leaving the girl to endure the abuse of her father and a life of self-recrimination. Still, for Lily and the reader, this background story invokes a great many questions. Accordingly, here mother's "death is a source of great anguish and mystery for the confused adolescent, a memory from when she was four that she still can't quite get her head around. Why was her mother throwing clothes into a suitcase that day when T. Ray stormed angrily into the bedroom, and more importantly, when the shot was fired, was it really Lily who had held the gun?" (Flanagan, 1)

This set of mysterious circumstances sets off a central mission for the protagonist to seek the redemption of a mother's love and the likelihood that this redemption would affiliate with the fulfillment of some larger moral obligation. In Lily's case, this moral obligation is an involvement with the Civil Rights movement if only by virtue of her dismissal of racism. Though this is something of an unspoken dismissal, it is a catalyst to her ability to find maternal love in Rosaleen and, thereafter, in the Calendar sisters. Perhaps this is something which is foretold by the Black Madonna.

That she finds a photograph in her mother's memory box depicting the Black Madonna is important, as the correlation between her eternally lost mother and the discovery of the Holy Mother becomes apparent. So too is there an observable correlation between the race of the Madonna and of the women in whom Lily finds her motherly needs. Kidd is wise to cause this idea to intersect directly with the unfolding of the Civil Rights movement, which is brought home by the vehement self-determination of Rosaleen. In an early sequence, Rosaleen practices her signature, telling Lily of her intention to vote according to the new Constitutional Act enabling such. In response, Lily observes that "an uneasy feeling settled in my stomach. Last night the television had said a man in Mississippi was killed for registering to vote." (Kidd, 27) This paints a very literal portrait of the broader social conditions contextualizing Lily's quest to compensate for the absence of a maternal nurturer. That the two will later go into hiding together suggests something of the understanding which Lily is forced to develop regarding the manner in which African-Americans are treated and how this contrasts with her own evolving understanding of human nature.

It is not long in the sequence of the novel before Lily has an opportunity to act on this understanding. When Rosaleen is accosted by a group of virulent racists and imprisoned for attempting to vote within the scope of her new rights, the contradictory nature of racism becomes significantly more obvious to Lily. Thus, Lily helps extricate Rosaleen from the hands of the law at great personal risk to herself. Together, the two flee North Carolina in search of relief from their respective forms of imprisonment. The common uncertainties represented in the two characters prevents either from fulfilling a nurturing role for the other so much as they form a mutual support system as they pursue the most prominent symbolic force in the story. This also begins to more concretely elaborate the key themes of the text. Namely, the text is driven by such resonant themes as "female empowerment, black entrepreneurship and, more than anything else, color-blind love. 'The themes in the book are relatable to all people,' says producer (of the film adaptation) Joe Pichirallo." (Horn, 1)

The words Tiburon, South Carolina had provided the only clue as to the origins of the Black Madonna photograph which had otherwise acted as an avatar to its original beholder. But as these words beckon Lily and Rosaleen toward the site in question, the seemingly metaphorical value of the photograph takes on a far more concrete form. When the two wander into a store in the town of their destination, Lily recalls that "I found myself looking at a picture of black Mary. I do not mean a picture of just any black Mary. I mean the identical, very same, exact one as my mother's. She stared at me from the labels of a dozen jars of honey." (Kidd, 62) Here, Lily discovers a hospitable family where three women dispense of their variant nurturing charms in order to elucidate a difficult but pivotal truth for the young girl. The so-called Calendar sisters, June, May and August, presided over a honey… READ MORE

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