SLOB
Lily Owens
As a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel, The Secret Life of Bees presents the development and maturation of one central character, Lily Owens. Lily’s voice makes up the central consciousness of the novel. Because she narrates the work, readers use Lily’s perceptions to develop their own interpretations. Through Lily, we learn about the racism, love, and community within the worlds of Tiburon and Sylvan, South Carolina; through her, we learn about strong women, such as August Boatwright and Rosaleen, and the importance of developing female-centric communities. Developing an understanding of Lily is central to understanding The Secret Life of Bees, because Lily’s story is the story of the novel: told by her and about her. Thus, Lily is both the protagonist and the narrator, the focus of the novel and the one who does the focusing. For these reasons, readers must be conscious of how Lily performs in her own account and of what she chooses to reveal about herself.
As a character, Lily’s two most important traits are her determination and her longing for maternal love. Lily finds a mysterious font of confidence after her fourteenth birthday and after she sees Rosaleen confront a group of racist men in Sylvan. This confidence allows Lily to escape an abusive, unpleasant home life and go searching for her mother’s past. Lily has a deep human need to be loved, so much so, in fact, that she risks her life and freedom by breaking Rosaleen out of jail. Similarly, she goes off to Tiburon, South Carolina, on the slim chance that there she will find a link to her dead mother. She has no idea when, where, or why Deborah once passed through Tiburon, only that she was once there. For all Lily knows, Tiburon could be a town her mother stopped in for lunch one day and never returned to again. However, her determination forces her to suss out any remaining traces of her mother—and she is rewarded for these character traits at the end of the novel, when she gains
As a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel, The Secret Life of Bees presents the development and maturation of one central character, Lily Owens. Lily’s voice makes up the central consciousness of the novel. Because she narrates the work, readers use Lily’s perceptions to develop their own interpretations. Through Lily, we learn about the racism, love, and community within the worlds of Tiburon and Sylvan, South Carolina; through her, we learn about strong women, such as August Boatwright and Rosaleen, and the importance of developing female-centric communities. Developing an understanding of Lily is central to understanding The Secret Life of Bees, because Lily’s story is the story of the novel: told by her and about her. Thus, Lily is both the protagonist and the narrator, the focus of the novel and the one who does the focusing. For these reasons, readers must be conscious of how Lily performs in her own account and of what she chooses to reveal about herself.
As a character, Lily’s two most important traits are her determination and her longing for maternal love. Lily finds a mysterious font of confidence after her fourteenth birthday and after she sees Rosaleen confront a group of racist men in Sylvan. This confidence allows Lily to escape an abusive, unpleasant home life and go searching for her mother’s past. Lily has a deep human need to be loved, so much so, in fact, that she risks her life and freedom by breaking Rosaleen out of jail. Similarly, she goes off to Tiburon, South Carolina, on the slim chance that there she will find a link to her dead mother. She has no idea when, where, or why Deborah once passed through Tiburon, only that she was once there. For all Lily knows, Tiburon could be a town her mother stopped in for lunch one day and never returned to again. However, her determination forces her to suss out any remaining traces of her mother—and she is rewarded for these character traits at the end of the novel, when she gains