Lily Owens Character Analysis in The Secret Life of Bees Essay Example

Watching a character grow and change throughout a novel is one of the most satisfying parts of reading, especially when said character grows because of a change in environment.  In Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, Lily Owens, a white girl from South Carolina in the 1960’s lived the first fourteen years of her life in a home that did not nurture her.  She grows sick of the miserable environment she lives in, and breaks her stand-in caregiver Rosaleen out of jail and runs away to Tiburon SC.  Over the course of the novel Lily grows from  mistreated and  troubled to a conflicted then fulfilled character as a result of the love and guidance of Rosaleen and the Boatwright sisters.

In the beginning of the story, Kidd portrays Lily Owens as a mistreated and troubled character. 

Lily displays her harboring guilt regarding her mothers untimely death when she reflects on the event  ‘This is what I know about myself. She was all I wanted. And I took her away.’ (Kidd, 8).  This feeling of blame and guilt that Lily harbors inside of herself due to the nature of her mothers death and the part she played in it assists in showing the reader how truly troubled Lily is.  Seeing as Lily accidentally killed her mother when she was very young, we as the reader know that she has carried this guilt for a long period of time.  Lily’s feelings concerning her mother and her death are important to acknowledge because they give the reader a basic understanding of the internal conflict that Lily will grow and come to terms with as the novel progresses. 

Alongside all of her feelings about her late mother, Lily also has to deal with an abusive, neglectful father. T. Ray Owens is Lily’s dad, and one could say he's less than enthusiastic about being an involved parent.  Aside from refusing to be an edifying parent, T. Ray also chooses physically painful punishments to inflict upon Lily when she acts upon unsavory behavior.  One of his most common punishments was having Lily kneel on corn grits.  ‘How long did he keep you on these grits?’ [Lily] shrugged. “Maybe an hour.” [...] “Look at you, child. Look what he’s done to you,” (Rosaleen) said. [her] knees had been tortured like this enough times in [her] life that [she’d] stopped thinking of it as out of the ordinary; it was just something you had to put up with from time to time, like the common cold. But suddenly the look on Rosaleen’s face cut through all that. Look what he’s done to you.’(Kidd, 25).   After finding Lily in his peach orchard T. Ray misinterpreted the situation and thinks Lily was out meeting a boy. He punishes her by making her kneel on grits till she's bleeding and bruised. The most disheartening part of this punishment is that Lily has grown accustomed to it. She no longer sees this obviously cruel and unnecessary pain as something out of the ordinary. This quote serves as an example of the mistreatment and cruelty that Lily suffers through under her fathers care.  T. Ray’s mistreatment of Lily is incredibly important to the story because it was one of the main reasons that Lily ran away to Tiburon S.C, where she would meet the Boatwright sister and begin her journey in finding a place and people to feel home.

Lily changes, however, into a conflicted character as a result of her estrangement from her mother, the Boatwrights and those around her.

After securing her stay with the Boatwrights, Lily struggles with her sense of belonging.  Not only did she feel excluded because she was a stranger living in someone else's home, but also because of her race as a white girl.  June, one of the boatwright sisters was quick to be suspicious of Lily because of how she resented the prejudice pitted against her fellow black people by white folks during this time.  When Lily tried to approach and connect to the statue of the lady in chains, a very important symbol to The Daughters of Mary, June cut her off, effectively ostracising her from her peers.  Lily, struck by this, thinks to herself ‘I am not one of you.’ (Kidd, 111).  This revelation that strikes Lily deeply starts her spiral into a deep, depressing, conflicted feeling.  We know that Lily has always been desperate to feel loved and wanted, so June’s behavior towards her is truly disheartening for Lily.  Seeing how close her peers are to each other and their family leads Lily to reflect on her relationship with her mother.  Or lack thereof.  She begins to fantasize about what it had been like to be in her womb when developing, and longing for that closeness.  ‘I wondered what it had been like to be inside her, just a curl of flesh swimming in her darkness, the quiet things that had passed between us.’ (Kidd, 171). Her desperation for knowledge about her mother, and to feel loved brings her to her final change in character.

Lily’s final change into a fulfilled character is marked by her being less defensive and opening up to August.  After the tragic death of May Boatwright, everything in the pink house seemed to be put on pause for every resident in the house was gripped by their mourning.  Everything being offset by May’s tragic death allows Lily to realise how much she loves August and her sisters as well as her life in Tiburon.  With this newfound discovery hand, Lily finally works up the courage to tell August of her mother.  But unfortunately for Lily, August was caught up in grief, and Lily didn’t want to interrupt August’s mouring.  Lily grows frustrated with herself and notes  ‘Life was so funny. I’d spent over a month here dilly dallying around, refusing to tell August about my mother when I could have done it so easy, and now that I really needed to tell her, I couldn’t.’ (Kidd, 214).  Lily’s regret about not telling August sooner, as well as the realization of how much she loves all of her peers in Tiburon is so important to the conclusion of Lily’s development because we can see how she's grown to feel genuine love not only for other people from others as well, which was something she craved throughout the novel.  In the concluding chapters of the book  T. Ray discovers Lily living with the Boatwrights and tries to bring her back with him.  But she was defended and supported by August, Rosaleen, June and The Daughters of Mary.  Lily, deeply moved by this, recalls this from that event ‘This is the moment I remember the clearest of them all- how I stood in the driveway looking back at them. I remember the sight of them standing there waiting. All these women, all this love, waiting.’ (Kidd, 299). Lily differs vastly from the beginning of the story compared to the end.  She finally feels as if she belongs and is wanted.

Lily transitions from unloved and selflothing to feeling wanted and cherished owing to the fact that she finally received the maternal love and care of Rosaleen and August Boatwright.  Starting off being mistreated and abused by her father for the first fourteen years of her life spurs her to run  away with her caregiver to a place written of by her late mother.  Lily’s mother’s belongings led her to the home of the Boatwright Sisters.  Here she overcomes June Boatwright’s scorn for her and earns the affection of August and The Daughters of Mary.  Lily’s journey can be seen as a message to treat people with respect regardless of previous stigmas you may have built around their identity.