Book Clubs and Inspirational Literature

In the twenty-first century, book clubs have surged in popularity, thanks in part to high-profile reading initiatives like Oprah Winfrey's televised monthly book club and endorsements from publishers and bookstores. Unknown authors have often found themselves skyrocketing to the top of bestseller lists due to book-club support. For instance, The Secret Life of Bees saw a significant boost after its 2002 release when it was chosen as the Good Morning America "Read This!" book for October. In 2003, a Penguin paperback edition of the novel was released, designed to cater to book clubs, complete with an author interview and discussion questions at the end.

Sue Monk Kidd's novel was well-positioned to become a favorite among book clubs due to its focus on themes that resonate with women, who make up the majority of book-club members. The novel features a predominantly female cast, a small-town setting, and explores themes of motherhood and female friendship, aligning it with other popular book-club picks by authors like Toni Morrison and Rebecca Wells. The book also tackles the issue of race, a topic of enduring interest, but does so through the perspective of its white protagonist, potentially making the subject more accessible to a wider audience.

The Secret Life of Bees was published at a time when literature with spiritual themes was seeing renewed interest—just four months after September 11, 2001, as Laura T. Ryan notes in her article in the Syracuse Post-Standard. Kidd's novel embodies the spirit of her earlier inspirational works, with the main character embarking on a journey to reconnect her soul with an inner feminine presence. The novel's success among book clubs and its inspirational message combined to give it widespread mainstream appeal.

Civil Rights–Era South

Many plays, movies, novels, and stories are set in the South during the 1960s. Southern writers who lived through that era often grapple with their experiences of racism and the civil rights movement's progress and setbacks from both sides of the racial divide. The Secret Life of Bees is specifically set in the immediate aftermath of the Civil Rights Act's signing in July 1964, a period marked by intense, racially motivated violence in the South, which is also referenced in the novel. For example, Lily discovers in May Boatwright's wailing wall a slip of paper that reads "Birmingham, Sept 15, four little angels dead," alluding to the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing in Alabama the previous year, where four girls were killed.

The Civil Rights Act enforced federal laws to protect the constitutional rights of African Americans, especially regarding public places like restaurants, stores, and hotels. Voter-registration rallies, similar to the one Rosaleen plans to attend in the novel, became common after state laws that made it difficult for black people to vote were overturned. In the early 1960s, tens of thousands of black South Carolinians registered to vote.

However, for some African Americans, social progress was not happening fast enough. Young black men, such as Zach Taylor in Kidd's novel, were increasingly attracted to more militant organizations like Malcolm X's Organization of Afro-American Unity, founded in 1964. Following his arrest, Zach becomes engrossed in the activities of such groups.

Religious Symbolism

In The Secret Life of Bees, Lily Owens encounters a group of women who have established a faith rooted in the endurance of their enslaved ancestors and a black wooden statue of the Virgin Mary. The symbols of their religion—not only the Madonna but also the honey from August’s hives and the chains symbolizing resistance to slavery—are significant to both the women and the narrative. Lily has known about the Black Madonna since her childhood. One of her few keepsakes linking her to her mother, who died when Lily was four, is an icon—a depiction of a dark-skinned Mary affixed to a small wooden plaque. As Lily learns from August Boatwright, this image of Mary is just one of many dark-skinned representations of her worldwide. Later in the novel, Lily examines a book filled with these Black Madonnas and notices the Archangel Gabriel often depicted presenting a lily to Mary, symbolizing Jesus's forthcoming birth. Lily's name itself is a religious symbol. This realization aligns with her growing sense of self-worth.

Nature Symbolism

Nature symbolism plays a crucial role in The Secret Life of Bees, most prominently through the bees that August Boatwright keeps. Much of August's life philosophy is derived from years of caring for and observing the bees. She teaches Lily that bees have a "secret life," where each bee has a specific role in the hive, and without a queen bee—the "mother of thousands," as August calls her—the hive loses its purpose. Lily realizes that the lessons she learns about the bees are applicable to her own life. The honey produced by the bees is essential to the Boatwright household; they use it medicinally, for shampooing and bathing, and in their religious rituals. The novel’s nature symbolism and religious imagery are deeply intertwined. August explains that bees represent death and rebirth. Early Christians used bee drawings to secretly communicate with each other. The names of the Boatwright sisters—August, May, and June—also symbolize their connection to nature and their love of life, being associated with the warm, fertile months of the year (another sister, April, died as a teenager).

Coming-of-Age Novel

The coming-of-age novel holds a significant place in Southern literature. The struggles of adolescence and self-discovery that Lily faces are reminiscent of those experienced by young female protagonists in other twentieth-century Southern novels, such as Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) and Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding (1946). These novels share additional parallels with The Secret Life of Bees: To Kill a Mockingbird similarly addresses racial prejudice in a small Southern town during segregation, and the relationship between Frankie and her family's housekeeper, Berenice, in The Member of the Wedding mirrors the bond between Lily and Rosaleen.

In these coming-of-age stories, a young girl takes her first uncertain steps toward adulthood and gains insight into the world around her. Lily's journey to maturity involves accepting her conflicting emotions about the mother who abandoned her and experiencing a spiritual awakening that helps her recognize the nurturing presence of the Black Madonna within herself. Additionally, she begins to understand her sexuality through her first romance with Zach Taylor, August's godson and beekeeping assistant. Zach's aspirations and the fact that he is black while Lily is white lead them to vow to be together in a more accepting future.

Storytelling

Storytelling is an essential element of Southern literature, tracing its roots back to Joel Chandler Harris's "Uncle Remus" stories and Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi (1883). For Southerners, storytelling serves as a hobby, a folk art, and a method to preserve family histories. Kidd has mentioned in interviews that one of her earliest inspirations as a writer, growing up in Georgia, was her father's storytelling talent.

In The Secret Life of Bees, August uses stories to educate Lily. She shares the tale of Sister Beatrix, a nun who becomes disillusioned with convent life, runs away, and eventually returns, disheartened by the outside world, only to discover that the Virgin Mary has been taking her place at the convent the entire time. August later explains to Lily that Sister Beatrix symbolizes Lily's mother, Deborah, and that she hoped Mary could serve as the mother figure Lily desperately needs.

August also recounts the story of the Black Madonna, Our Lady of Chains, to reinforce the sense of community among the Daughters of Mary and to remind them of their slave ancestors' bravery. The statue, originally a ship's masthead found by a slave on a coastal plantation, became a symbol of comfort and strength to the other slaves, especially when it repeatedly freed itself from the chains the plantation owner used to lock it in the barn for fifty consecutive nights.

Additionally, August tells Lily the story of Aristaeus—the first beekeeper in Greek mythology—whose bees were killed by the gods and then reborn from the body of a sacrificial bull. Following this myth, people believed that bees held power over life and death.

• The Secret Life of Bees (2002) is offered on both audio cassette and audio CD, available in abridged and unabridged formats. You can also download an audio version from audible.com. Additionally, a film adaptation of the book will soon be released by Fox Searchlight.

Sources

Brown, Rosellen, "Honey Child," in the Women's Review of Books, Vol. 19, Issue 7, April 2002, p. 11.

Kidd, Sue Monk, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine, HarperSanFrancisco, 1996.

――――――, The Secret Life of Bees, Penguin, 2003.

Morey, Ann-Janine, "The Secret Life of Bees," in Christian Century, Vol. 120, Issue 4, pp. 68-70.

Ryan, Laura T., "A Dream No Longer Deferred," in the Syracuse Post-Standard, March 13, 2005, p. 4.

Simhon, Rachel, "Honey Is the Balm," Daily Telegraph (London), www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2002/02/24/bobees23.xml (February 23, 2002).

Zickefoose, Jarrod, "Alternate Worlds, Past Passions in These Coming-of-Age Stories," in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, February 17, 2001, p. J11.

Further Reading

Begg, Ean C. M., The Cult of the Black Virgin, Penguin, 1997.

Begg documents around five hundred instances of Black Madonnas globally. The author connects these dark-skinned Madonnas to paganism and Gnostic Christianity.

Flynn, Nick, Blind Huber, Greywolf, 2002.

Flynn's poetry collection revolves around François Hubert, a seventeenth-century blind beekeeper from France, whose extensive study of bees significantly advanced our understanding of their behavior.

Johnson, Elizabeth A., She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse, Crossroad, 1992.

Johnson's work is regarded as one of the most fundamental texts on the topic. It elucidates much of the feminist foundations underlying Kidd's depiction of Our Lady of Chains in the novel.

Moody, Anne, Coming of Age in Mississippi, Doubleday, 1968.

Moody offers a vivid personal narrative of growing up as an African American in the segregated South and engaging in civil rights protests, reflecting the events mentioned in The Secret Life of Bees.

Tate, Linda, A Southern Weave of Women: Fiction of the Contemporary South, University of Georgia Press, 1994.

This examination of Southern women fiction writers since World War II places Kidd's novel within the broader context of Southern literature.