How Does Kidd Present Lily In The Secret Life Of Bees

Throughout the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd sends the main character, Lily, on a journey to better understand where her mother came from. Lily was raised from an early age strictly by T. Ray, her father, who does not have a good or close relationship with her at all. Although T. Ray is only directly with Lily at the beginning and end of the novel, he affects Lily throughout the whole story. Kidd communicates that all people love differently by choosing to use T. Ray as both an antagonist and a cathartic tool. From the beginning, Lily tells us that T. Ray is a whole new level of abusive. When he found her outside, at night, all she could imagine was “T. Ray rushing home so he could start right away constructing pyramids of grits all through the house” (37). Lily can only think about what her punishment is going to be when she gets back to the house. She talks about it like it is a …show more content…
Ray loves her because of the way he treats her. She feels that he will do anything to make her unhappy; she asks if she can get new clothes that all the other girls are wearing but “T. Ray said hell would be an ice rink before [she] went out like that --- did [she] want to end up pregnant like Bitsy Johnson” (9). Lily is very upset and feels as though T. Ray is out to make her life miserable. However, in actuality T. Ray is just trying to look out for Lily. When Lily asks August why her mother married T. Ray in the first place she says, “‘Honey, Deborah was pregnant, that’s why”’ (249). It suddenly all clicks for Lily; the real reason T. Ray doesn’t want Lily dressing like all the other girls in the town is because he doesn’t want what happened to him and her mother to happen to Lily. It’s not that he hates Lily and wants to make her feel sad, but that he doesn’t want Lily to end up backed into a corner like him. He doesn’t want Lily to have any regrets in life; he wants her to live up to her full