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The Secret Life Of Bees Literary Analysis

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Lily Owen's coming of age journey came with a lot of set backs, but she ultimately learns what it is like to love, be loved and supported. In Sue Monk Kidd's, "The Secret Life of Bees," the story of Lily's experience as a teenager transitioning into a young woman is explored. She begins the story as a naive, neglected child and by the end, Lily is a more matured, young women. Within her journey, Lily experiences the influences of spiritually and motherhood . Lily was raised in the 1960's South by her abusive father, T.Ray. Daily, Lily struggles with the void she feels for her mother and T.Ray's physical and emotional abuse. After discovering a town affiliated with her dead mother, Lily joins forces with her caregiver, Rosaleen, and they both escape their burdens that remain in Sylvan, South Carolina. Lily's burdens include the absence of a mother and her abusive father and Rosaleen's include an unjust arrest for being African American. The …show more content…
Early on, August, the eldest Boatwright, introduces Lily to spiritual life of the Daughter's of Mary. This religion is very important because the symbol of the religion, the black Madonna, is also on the honey the sisters produce, highlighting its significance. In a literary criticism by, Charles Brower, an editor and freelance writer, he criticizes Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees positively and admires the picture Kidd paints of the power of faith within the novel. He states, "Kidd was a practicing Southern Baptist for most of the first forty years of her life but had a spiritual awakening that led her to reconnect with her feminine soul, as she terms it—"a woman's inner repository of the Divine Feminine" (Brower). Kidd's spark of feminism and faith filled background is clearly influenced in her creation of the Daughter's of Mary and its symbolic Black Madonna. August explains to Lily the power of faith and says, "You don't have to put your hand on Mary's heart to get strength and consolation and rescue, and

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