Feminism In The Secret Life Of Bees

While the civil rights movement was occurring, racism was at its highest point in America. During the 1960s in South Carolina, a determined fourteen-year old girl, Lily Owens, takes the focus of interest in the novel The Secret Life of Bees when she takes off from her abusive father searching for answers about her mother. Along with her housekeeper, Rosaleen, Lily turns up in a household of three African American women who show her a whole new perspective of life. In the coming of age novel The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, Lily’s perseverance urges her to uncover the truth about her mother while she evolves as a young woman in the Boatwright household. In The Secret Life of Bees, the whole story is fixated on Lily 's journey to figure out everything she can about her mother, Deboarah, and her yearning desire for motherly love. Lily does not have many memories of her mother except that she was the one who shot and killed her when she was four years old. The only mother figure in Lily 's life is her African American nanny, Rosaleen. When Rosaleen is arrested after standing up to a group of racists, Lily takes the opportunity to escape from her abusive father and start her search about her mother 's past (Haunt 238). In absence of a real mother, Lily always longed for love …show more content…
Kidd characterized the Black Madonna as powerful. In the novel she states, "Her darkness has great power in it." (Kidd). The Madonna teaches you how to search your heart and not to be afraid of your pain. If people forgive, it will strengthen them and allow them to get through all their problems. Eckhart Meister said, "All the names we give to God come from an understanding of ourselves. To give God the name "Black Madonna" is to honor blackness and all people of color and to get over an excessive whiteness of soul and culture." People who worship the Black Madonna have a simplified image of others and do not