Melissa Owens Quotes
SECRET LIFE OF BEES – REVISION NOTES
Central Characters
Lily Melissa Owens
Lily is a fourteen-year-old girl whose mother died when she was four years old, an accident that Lily feels she was responsible for. She dresses in clothes she made in home economics. She is not a popular person in school. She has jet-black hair that resembles a nest of cowlicks, no chin, Sophia Loren eyes and an inferiority complex. She takes to picking scabs on her body and biting the flesh around her fingernails until they bleed. Boys, even the hard-up ones, ignore her. Rosaleen makes Lily wear breeches in the cold, which are neither fashionable nor complimentary, especially under her dresses. Girls become quiet when she walks past, because she has no fashion …show more content…
The eldest of the Boatwright sisters, her hair has a flour-dusted appearance, and her skin is the colour of almond butter. She wears rimless glasses, and she has a face of a thousand caramel wrinkles. When she wears her beekeeping outfit, she looks like an African bride. She is a kind, considerate and insightful woman, who is extremely intelligent. August knows and understands a great deal about culture and teaches Lily things about Eskimos and other peoples. She loves peanuts in her Coca-Cola, a delicacy she and Lily share. She studied at Negro College in Maryland to be a teacher. She worked for nine years as a housekeeper before becoming a history teacher. August is against marriage because she loves her freedom …show more content…
Early in the novel, Lily attaches ritual importance to the few items of her mother's that she possesses. She keeps them buried in a particular spot outside and looks at them only in secret. She has a pair of gloves that she wears to imagine what her mother must have been like. May Boatwright has developed her own ritual to cope with the anxiety she feels over the misfortunes of others. She writes a prayer for the suffering party on a slip of paper and inserts the paper in a wailing wall she constructed behind the Boatwright house. After May dies, Lily takes over maintaining the
Central Characters
Lily Melissa Owens
Lily is a fourteen-year-old girl whose mother died when she was four years old, an accident that Lily feels she was responsible for. She dresses in clothes she made in home economics. She is not a popular person in school. She has jet-black hair that resembles a nest of cowlicks, no chin, Sophia Loren eyes and an inferiority complex. She takes to picking scabs on her body and biting the flesh around her fingernails until they bleed. Boys, even the hard-up ones, ignore her. Rosaleen makes Lily wear breeches in the cold, which are neither fashionable nor complimentary, especially under her dresses. Girls become quiet when she walks past, because she has no fashion …show more content…
The eldest of the Boatwright sisters, her hair has a flour-dusted appearance, and her skin is the colour of almond butter. She wears rimless glasses, and she has a face of a thousand caramel wrinkles. When she wears her beekeeping outfit, she looks like an African bride. She is a kind, considerate and insightful woman, who is extremely intelligent. August knows and understands a great deal about culture and teaches Lily things about Eskimos and other peoples. She loves peanuts in her Coca-Cola, a delicacy she and Lily share. She studied at Negro College in Maryland to be a teacher. She worked for nine years as a housekeeper before becoming a history teacher. August is against marriage because she loves her freedom …show more content…
Early in the novel, Lily attaches ritual importance to the few items of her mother's that she possesses. She keeps them buried in a particular spot outside and looks at them only in secret. She has a pair of gloves that she wears to imagine what her mother must have been like. May Boatwright has developed her own ritual to cope with the anxiety she feels over the misfortunes of others. She writes a prayer for the suffering party on a slip of paper and inserts the paper in a wailing wall she constructed behind the Boatwright house. After May dies, Lily takes over maintaining the