In the very first chapter of Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, the main character, Lily Owens, starts off by describing her mother, and she associates the concept of a "mother" with the idea of a legal and natural connection between a woman and her child. This opening immediately puts a great amount of emphasis on the theme of motherly love. Lily spends the majority of her childhood attempting to put together the missing pieces of her mother's life. As Lily matures to understand her connection with her biological mother throughout this novel, the concept of “mother love” is strongly stressed and serves a huge importance to Lily, opposed to the other forms of love she experiences in life.
At the beginning of The Secret Life of Bees,