Final - Literary Analysis of The Secret Life of Bees

Ava Dunwoody

LS 4320.01 

Literary Analysis/Final Exam

The Secret Life of Bees is a Teacher Not to Be Kept on a Shelf

Set in the 1960s, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of a young girl named Lily and her life living alone with an abusive father and African American nanny during a time of racism and sexism. An encounter with a racist group of white men sparks the inciting incident that causes Lily and her nanny, Rosaleen, to run away from home, avoiding the police officers and trying to find refuge amid a world that is not welcoming for the two. The reason this book has been banned so many times is because of the harsh nature of racism, sexism, and abuse. This includes a lot of language that is not acceptable in today’s time but unfortunately was in the 1960s. According to a scholarly article on the nature of The Secret Life of Bees as a banned book, “The Secret Life of Bees was challenged by a school in Texas because of the use of inappropriate language, according to a National Council of Teachers of English report” (Brianna 1). There are also topics life first love, police brutality, muder, gun violence, and suicide in this novel. One of the most shocking things in the novel may have been the use of grits as a form of child abuse, as Lily’s father would make her pour them on the floor and kneel on them for hours to make her knees bleed when she misbehaved. While it is reasonable to consider how all of these harsh topics would impact a young mind, it is also important to give the book a holistic look and consider it from more than just the “bad” topics that it covers, because sometimes, it is important that those topics are addressed. In many cases, “Books are icons of literature, and their value should outshine the occasionally offensive topic” (Should 1). It is clear from the scholarly literature and importance of the lessons that The Secret Life of Bees should not be banned and should be taught in schools. 

There are many important lessons that are taught in The Secret Life of Bees that outshine the negative or harder to swallow concepts in the novel, though many of the lessons are taught through the use of addressing these harder topics. Sometimes, it is important for students to hear about negative things like pain, racism, crime, and death because it teaches them valuable lessons about dealing with hardships, which is a life skill that is necessary because human pain is inevitable. For example, this book has a lot to do with it’s setting, which was in a time of intense injustice in the country. It was because “The society, culture, and politics of the 1960s paved the way for injustice and inequality in America” (Secret 1). There were many events that shaped this time period, which influenced Sue Monk Kidd’s writing of the novel. These events included “The Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed by Lyndon B. Johnson, which ended racial discrimination across the country,” “The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law by President Johnson,ended literacy tests and poll taxes that were required for citizens to vote,” and “The March on Washington in 1963, which was a march for freedom and jobs, was led by Martin Luther King Jr. where he gave the famous “I Have A Dream” speech” (Secret 1). 

These events shaped the writing of the novel because the setting is very important to understand why Lily and Rosaleen had to do what they did and emphasized how dire their situation was. By reading this novel, students are able to take a look into a time period that they need to learn about because without history lessons, history is bound to repeat itself. Students need to see the hard parts of the past in order to learn what was wrong about them because that will equip them to prevent similar things from happening in the future. If students were not given the chance to talk about why it is wrong to harras women or call them names because of their skin color, how would they know what to think or do if they ever encountered that in real life? Or how would they even know it was wrong? Discussing topics like these leads to the betterment of society by teaching valuable cautionary tales to younger generations so that they will grow to be well-rounded and educated citizens. 

Another powerful concept students may get from reading The Secret Life of Bees is the feeling of belonging or feeling represented. As Lily is a young girl, she is going through many of the bildungsroman classic emotions and development, like the feeling of being different or left out from her peers. Lily had a hard time and “struggled with her self-identity because of how she’s not like any of the girls at her school” (Secret 1). On page 9 of the novel, Lily says, “I worried so much about how I looked and whether I was doing things right, I felt half the time I was impersonating a girl instead of really being one.” This feeling of imposter syndrome or not belonging is something that a lot of adolescents go through, so having a character like Lily in a book talked about in class may create a sense of feeling heard or understood for these students, making them better understand that these feelings are real and normal, hopefully creating an environment they feel more included in. Lily also deals with things like first love, crushes, fear, grief, and comfort, which are all human emotions that are expressed well in the novel. Because Lily is such an accessible character, students are more likely to relate to her and connect with the novel in ways that allows lessons to be learned more readily. 

There is also an important lesson about connection and family taught in this novel that makes it something vital for students to read in the classroom. As Lily grows up without a mother, she consistently longs for a mother figure in her life and feels incomplete without her mom by her side. When Lily and Rosaleen find August Boatwright, they discover that a mother figure does not necessarily need to be blood related. August teaches them what a powerful and strong woman looks like, as “she is educated, loving, nurturing, and more” (Should 1). The amount of female empowerment in this book is especially significant because of the lack of female empowerment during the 1960s era of male-dominance. August teaches Lily about women and family units through the metaphor of bees, as she is a beekeeper. She is using bees to show Lily and is “teaching her about humans in easier to understand terms” (Should 1). August explains how bee colonies can only exist if there is a queen bee there, just as Lily is feeling like she cannot exist without a mother figure there for her. After some time, Lily learns that a mother figure does not always equate to a biological mother, as there are women in Lily’s life now that she can look up to and grow from, who care for her and love her just as a mother would. The lesson taught from this part of the novel is that family is not based on blood alone, but is instead based on those you surround yourself with and care about. This lesson is important for students to learn as well because many of them may come from a home broken from death or divorce and the feelings of displacement Lily has may be shared. By teaching this novel, teachers are giving students a way to cope with that and better understand their own personal situations.

Mother Mary is another prominent figure in this novel and stands as yet another example of a powerful woman that Lily learns to look up to. August and her sisters saw Mary as a powerful, strong, and courageous woman who does what is right. When Lily experiences what the sisters see in Mary, she feels pulled to her and then eventually faints. In many ways, “reacting to this statue in the way she does foreshadows Lily’s eventual transformation.” This is because “readers see that Lily has the ability to become a powerful woman because she can recognize and feel magnetically pulled toward images of such a woman” (Should 1). Just as Lily feels a pull to the strong women in her life, students, especially young girls, can similarly feel pulled to the strong women in this novel, which can help “young girls develop into strong and powerful women” (Should 1). 

Even Rosaleen experiences this empowerment within the text. Near the end of the novel, she begins feeling the strength passed on to her from the other women and goes to register to vote, even after the traumatic experience she had with the racist white men. On page 281, she says, “‘I’m gonna finish what I started,’ Rosaleen said, lifting her chin. ‘I’m gonna register to vote.’” This is a direct example of someone learning an important lesson from the text, which mirrors how students can derive important meaning from the texts too. The themes of perseverance and identity in this novel are important because students can relate to both of these. The historical context of this novel helps form these themes, as does the growth of the women within the text. 

Banning this novel would simply deprive students of important lessons to be learned from the 1960s and from the women in this text who stand as an example of female empowerment, belonging, and inner strength. While there are sensitive topics, they are not extreme enough that they should be censored or hidden from the view of students, nor should they be skipped around. Talking about hard things like suicide, abuse, and racism allows students to become comfortable discussing these topics and forming well-informed opinions in order to help prevent issues within these topics from occuring in the future. The Secret Life of Bees teaches students about independence, justice, belonging, identity, grief, shame, guilt, empathy, familial structure, love, and passion. Of course there are difficult topics—there cannot be the joys of life without the pains of it. Avoiding a novel like this one because of the smaller, controversial topics that are kept within it would rob students from the experiences gained by visiting the real worlds that are held within the words on a page.

Works Cited

Brianna Childers. “Artists Design Trading Cards for Banned Books Week Celebration at the 

Lawrence Public Library.” The University Daily Kansan, 28 Sept. 2015, www.kansan.com/arts_and_culture/artists-design-trading-cards-for-banned-books-week-celebration-at/article_2083ff50-661e-11e5-82ba-3b931d04d67e.html#:~:text=Why%20it%20was%20banned%3A%20%22The,of%20Teachers%20of%20English%20report.&text=by%20Joseph%20Heller-,%E2%80%9CThe%20airplane%20on%20a%20string%20suggests%20the%20limited,some%20of%20the%20characters%20have. 

“The Secret Life of Bees: Perseverance and Identity.” UKEssays.com, 

www.ukessays.com/essays/literature/the-secret-life-of-bees-perseverance-and-identity.php. 

Should Books Be Banned In Schools Essay, 

www.ipl.org/essay/Should-Books-Be-Banned-In-Schools-Essay-PJCSJRSWU.