Summary
When Lily wakes, she discovers a very tall black man named
Neil hanging around at the Boatwright house. He is June’s sweetheart. June
refuses to marry him, although he continues to ask for her hand.
Lily wonders why none of the three sisters is married. Later that
day, the Daughters of Mary—August’s spiritual community—arrive for
services. The Daughters are a group of six women (and one man) who
wear elaborate hats. The service, which focuses on the black Mary
statue, involves much singing and dancing and praying aloud. In
the middle, August begins to tell the story of the black Mary statue,
referring to it as “Our Lady of Chains.” The story describes how
the statute was found in a river, then brought into a community
of black slaves. The slaves began to worship it, until their owner
took it. The owner, intending to keep it away from the slaves, chained
the statue up, but it miraculously, and continually, escaped. The
statue offered the slave group spiritual unity and power and began
to be passed down through generations. After the story has been
told, the Daughters of Mary take turns touching the statue’s painted
heart while singing and dancing together. When Lily’s turn comes,
however, she feels overwhelmed and blacks out. Everybody blames
the fainting spell on the heat. Later that night, while watching
television, they see a report on an impending lunar rocket landing.
Lily has relaxed somewhat into the Boatwright routine
but still feels nervous whenever she hears the wail of a police
siren. Lily recounts meeting Zach for the first time, after she
and Rosaleen had have been at the Boatwright house for eight days.
An African American high school junior, Zach makes Lily feel things
she had never felt before, including sexual attraction. They begin
to flirt and become friends while working together in the honey
house. Zach tells Lily that he wants to be a lawyer, and Lily admits
to him that she wants to be an English teacher and writer. Lily
begins to call Zach an “ass-busting lawyer.” Later, Rosaleen confronts
Lily and asks her what she thinks she is doing at the Boatwright
house. She accuses her of living in a fantasy. Lily wonders how
long she can stay in this imaginary world but also longs to tell
August the truth. The next day, Lily and Zach are sent six miles
out to get the last batch of honey to harvest. The day is very hot
and Lily gets overly emotional: laughing hysterically, then crying
uncontrollably. Lily realizes she has developed romantic feelings
for Zach, and she suspects he feels the same for her. That day,
Lily also learns about the town’s most prized writer, Willifred
Marchant.
Back at the honey house, Lily comes upon Rosaleen moving
out. Later, Rosaleen tells Lily that she is going to be moving into
the main house to share a room with May. She tells Lily that Rosaleen’s
presence will make May feel safer. Lily understands but feels jealous
and abandoned. Walking Rosaleen upstairs to her new room, Lily crosses
August reading a book called Jane Eyre. The book,
August tells her, is about a girl whose mother died when she was
very young. Hearing this makes Lily panic—she assumes August knows
everything and longs even more to tell her the truth. Meanwhile,
Neil and June continue to fight, and the tension between June and
Lily continues to grow. The next day, Zach brings Lily a notebook
for her to use to work on her stories. He explains that society
will never allow them to be together. Lily begins writing immediately.
Analysis
These chapters emphasize the importance of having spirituality
in one’s life, regardless of whether that spirituality comes from
organized religion, from one’s past, or from one’s own imagination.
The Daughters of Mary are not a conventional religious community.
A minister or priest does not administer their services, nor is
their religion conventionally Catholic or Protestant. Instead, the
Daughters function as a social group, a gathering of close friends,
a support group, and a spiritual club. Together, they celebrate
a feminine spiritual power and honor their history as decedents
of slaves. This religious community contrasts with the one in which
Lily was raised in Sylvan, in which their congregation, led by Brother
Gerald, was taught to dislike Catholics. In chapter 1,
Brother Gerald refuses to lend Rosaleen and Lily a fan, even though
the day is broiling and the two are walking a long distance. Even
though it takes some of the Daughters, especially June, a while
to accept Lily because of her skin color, they welcome the young
girl to their prayer sessions and celebrations. When she faints,
the Daughters rush to Lily’s aid, thinking only about helping her
recover. Similarly, dancing, passion, and joy mark the Daughters’
prayer session, rather than the staid self-possession required by
some church services. Nevertheless, the Daughters practice some
traditions taken from organized religion: they pray to and caress
a statue, they sing familiar hymns and spirituals, and they have
stories about the statue, which they repeat at key moments. The
Daughters celebrate and pray in ways that feel natural and appropriate
to them, without any intervention from outsiders.
Lily’s interactions with Zach give her a dual awakening:
she awakens to sexual desire as well as to her mental processes.
Lily finds Zach physically attractive almost immediately, much to
her surprise. His dimple, his handsome face, and his charm all combine to
make Lily want to be around him. But according to Lily’s social experiences,
white girls could not be attracted to black men,
regardless of the context. Lily had also assumed that black faces
were simply less attractive than white faces. But Lily’s sexual
awakening is coupled with a burgeoning awareness of the realities
of racism. Despite the fact that Lily has managed to overcome at
least some of her innate prejudice toward African Americans, her
attraction to Zach forces Lily to realize that the world, particularly
the South of the 1950s, might not be ready
to accept them as boyfriend and girlfriend. This realization causes
her to become overwhelmed by her feelings for Zach, which leads
to the emotional hysterics she experiences in the truck.
Kidd creates an explicit parallel between The
Secret Life of Bees and an earlier work of literature when
she presents August reading Jane Eyre. As with The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in an earlier chapter, here
Kidd compares the protagonist of her novel, Lily, to the protagonist
of Charlotte Brontë’s novel. Kidd uses the two other novels to establish
the genres of her own novel: Twain’s novel is a classic tale of
escape; Brontë’s novel is a classic coming-of-age story. Like Lily,
Jane Eyre is a poor, motherless, young girl who loves to read and
who struggles to overcome difficult circumstances. Both novels are
bildungsromans, and both depict their narrators’ experiences and
growing self-awareness. Both novels also feature secrets and interracial
relationships: Jane’s employer, Rochester, has locked away his first
wife, a half-black, half-white woman who has gone somewhat mad.
Rochester hides his marriage from Jane, much as Lily hides her origins
from August. In both novels, society seems to have abandoned the
two young women and frowns upon the relationships they form. But
the two protagonists gain strength from this disdain, ultimately
creating lives in which to flourish.
