The Secret Life Of Bees By Sue Kidd

The Secret Life of Bees, written by Sue Kidd, follows Lily Owens as she faces life’s continuous ups and downs. Lily’s troubled life at home plays a significant role in how she develops throughout the story. After Lily unintentionally kills her mother when she is young, her father T-Ray becomes both physically and emotionally abusive towards her. Since her mother’s death, she was mainly cared for by her maid, Rosaleen. Despite Lily's decision to run away from her father with Rosaleen and to leave behind the only family she had ever known, she learns what family really means when she meets the three sisters. Through a comparison of the relationships Lily shares with her father, Zach, and the three sisters, we see Lily grow as a young woman in

When Lily finally stands up for herself against T-Ray, he says to her, “The truth is, your sorry mother ran off and left you. The day she died, she’d come back to get her things, that’s all. You can hate me all you want, but she’s the one who left you” (Kidd 39). The cruel truth and the way he tells her breaks Lily’s heart. As a consequence, she runs away with Rosaleen to be in a place where her mother had been. If it were not for T-Ray harshly revealing how her mother had left them, Lily never would have ended up at August’s house or developed into the stable and confident person she became. T-Ray’s brutality made Lily realize that she had to leave to save herself. In this moment she realizes her strength and independence could lead her to new opportunities. This proves to be a turning point in her life, and ultimately her growth as a young woman, as she ventures in hopes of finding something better. Similarly, near the end of the book, as August is telling Lily about her mother, Lily finds out that her mother had only married T-Ray because she was pregnant. Lily repeats in her mind, “Unwanted, I was an unwanted baby,” (249). Even though this is upsetting for Lily to realize, it forces her to come to the conclusion that leaving her dad was the right thing to do as she would always be “unwanted” by