Lily Owens, as a Character and as a Person.

Lily Owens is a fourteen year-old girl who, in the beginning of The Secret Life of Bees, finds herself feeling very much alone and unloved. Friendless, and motherless, Lily is raised by a seemingly heartless father, and Rosaleen, their black maid, who becomes Lily’s first friend. Lily tells the novel in first person, so the readers get an inside look at her thoughts and feelings, and throughout the novel we watch Lily mature from a lost girl into a strong woman. Sue Monk Kidd, the author The Secret Life of Bees, creates a character out of Lily that many readers can relate to. Although many have not experienced the loss of a parent as Lily has, almost everyone has felt alone or unloved at some point. The way in which Lily strives for a father that loves her, or waits around to be invited to a sleepover, is something that almost every child goes through at some time in their life. This realness makes Lily a lovable and relatable character for nearly anyone who reads the novel.

As the novel progresses and Lily matures, we watch her turn from a weak child into someone who stands up for herself. Lily, although still skeptical on whether or not she hates T. Ray or feels bad for leaving him, doesn’t allow him to treat her like a child anymore. She stands up to him, and when he comes to the Boatwright house to pick her up, Lily refuses to go. Also, Lily learns how to forgive. Once she finds out the truth about her mother, she feels a lot of hatred towards her, not only for leaving her, but for marrying T. Ray just because she was pregnant. These feelings of hatred are teamed up with more feelings of being unwanted and unloved. Lily also feels regret for her killing her mother, even though it was an accident, it is something that Lily will have to live with forever. She comments on this in the novel when Zach feels like he to blame for May’s death, “I was afraid, though, the blame would find a way to stick to them. That’s how blame was.” When a person experiences the death of someone close to them, there are always regrets involved, and almost always people take the blame for what has happened. Lily’s character is made more realistic by showing these emotions throughout the novel.

One of the other main themes in the novel, which helps readers to relate with Lily as a character and as a person, is when she finally finds herself. Throughout the story, we watch Lily go through a rollercoaster ride of emotions and thought processes while she is trying to figure out who she is, and in the end, it all comes together. Lily finds herself loved and a part of a family when T. Ray comes to get her and all the Daughters are there along with Rosaleen and August. The feelings of love that she has longed for all of her life are finally there. She no longer needs her mother back, she no longer feels as though she’s a worker bee who had lost her Queen bee. She has found herself many new Queens, and can therefore become a part of the world again, and quit living the lie that she had been the entire summer, if not her entire life. The ‘perfect’ world that Lily had wanted to live in, had come to her, not as literally ‘perfect’, but as ideal. As August once said to Lily, “There is nothing perfect... there is only life.” (601)