Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Individual
Group Discount
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews September 28, 2023 September 21, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan - Group Discount
Qty: 00
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
Mr. Avery Gatson, the policeman, drives Lily and Rosaleen to jail while the three white men follow in their pickup truck. Lily is impressed by how resolute and strong Rosaleen seems. When they arrive at the jail, the three men are waiting. They demand that Rosaleen apologize. When she refuses, one hits her on the head with a flashlight. Mr. Gatson then takes the two women into jail. T. Ray soon comes to take Lily out, but they leave Rosaleen behind. While driving home, T. Ray tells Lily that one of Rosaleen’s three attackers—Franklin Posey—is the town’s worst racist and that he will kill Rosaleen even if she does apologize. At home, T. Ray scolds Lily harshly, but she stands up to him. She tells him that her mother will not let him harm her, but he laughs at the idea that her dead mother functions as her guardian angel. He tells Lily that Deborah had already abandoned Lily when she returned home and was killed. This comment hurts Lily deeply, but she does not believe T. Ray. She notices that the bee jar next to her bed is empty, and she realizes that she too needs to escape her own jar. She needs to run away.
On the road, Lily decides to head toward Tiburon, the town written on the back of her mother’s Black Mary picture. Lily sets out to go to the jail. Halfway, Brother Gerald picks her up. Lily lies to him about Rosaleen’s actions. At the jail, Lily learns that Rosaleen has been taken to the hospital, and she leaves the jail to go there instead. In the Black patient wing of the Sylvan Memorial Hospital, she discovers that the three men were allowed into the jail to beat Rosaleen further—which is why Rosaleen is in the hospital. Lily tricks the security guard with a phony phone call and slips out of the hospital with Rosaleen. They head to Highway
The next day, Lily awakes feeling as if she slept next to Thoreau’s Walden Pond. She feels as if today is the first day of her new life. As she contemplates the Black Mary picture, she realizes that not only does she not know much about Mary, she has never met a Catholic. She soon wakes Rosaleen, who says she dreamed about Martin Luther King Jr., imagining that she painted her toenails with his spit. They begin to walk toward town—both anointed in their new lives. Lily, looking for a sign to offer her guidance, spots the Frogmore General Store and heads in to buy some food for her and Rosaleen. Inside, she tells the clerk that she has arrived in town to visit her grandma, orders two pork meals and two cokes, and steals some snuff for Rosaleen. She then notices a selection of Black Madonna Honey jars. On them is the picture of the Black Mary picture she has from her mother. The clerk tells her that the maker of this honey, August Boatwright, lives on the other side of Tiburon. Convinced that she is somewhere her mother once was, Lily goes outside to tell Rosaleen about her discovery. They also buy a paper to see if their disappearance has made the news, and discover that it has not.
An undercurrent of religious spirituality runs through The Secret Life of Bees. But this type of spirituality does not resemble organized religions, such as Catholicism; rather, it combines elements of magic, strange coincidences, and gut feelings. Lily sometimes feel as if Deborah watches and protects her from beyond the grave, and she goes off to Tiburon, S.C., simply because those words were printed on the back of a picture once belonging to her mother. She even claims to hear a voice telling her to leave Sylvan and T. Ray. This decision signifies Lily’s impetuous nature, as well as her desire to be sheltered and to feel as if she belonged—all powerful religious drives. The picture belongs to a label for Black Madonna Honey. Obviously this name has religious echoes, but the experience itself has the feel of an eerie, spiritual coincidence. At this point, the book begins to resemble a fable, as if its actions were taking place in a parallel universe, which only dimly resembles the real universe. Once they escape Sylvan, Lily and Rosaleen seem to exist in this semimagical state, and Lily compares the area in which they spend the night to the setting of a fairy tale. Rosaleen even feels moved by the Black Mary picture. Magic happens, these chapters imply, if we trust ourselves and follow our instincts or intuition.
Each scene of the novel offers Lily an opportunity to learn something, to deepen her understanding, or to overcome a difficulty, because the novel itself is a record of Lily’s process of growing up. In chapters
These chapters emphasize the importance of reading, writing, storytelling, and using one’s imagination. In chapter
Please wait while we process your payment