illustration of the back of main character Lily Owens's head with a honeycomb background

The Secret Life of Bees

by Sue Monk Kidd

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Student Question

How is Lily a dynamic character in The Secret Life of Bees?

Quick answer:

Lily is a dynamic character, evolving significantly throughout the story. Initially, she is an insecure 14-year-old, haunted by her mother's death and intimidated by her father. Her journey begins when she leaves home, seeking answers about her mother, and finds refuge with August Boatwright. This experience helps her develop self-awareness, maturity, and emotional openness. Through nurturing relationships, Lily discovers her own capacity for love and maternal instincts, ultimately transforming into a more confident and self-assured young woman.

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The definition of a dynamic character is one who changes throughout the course of the plot.  Lily is definitely a dynamic character.  We meet her, the narrator of her own story, as an awkward, insecure, young-for-her-age 14 year old.  She is haunted by the death of her mother and fears her father.  Needless to say, without a direct maternal figure in her life and overpowered by a very brutish and violent father, she has been living on survival mode.  What she lacks femininity - she more than makes up for in the awareness that she is growing up and changing, both physically and emotionally.  This only heightens her insecurity.

Then she leaves home.  Such a drastic decision inevitably would change anyone.  In search of answers to her mother's death (and life) she meets August Boatwright and "family."  She introspectively begins to develop a keener sense of self and maturity, begins...

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to open up to those around her emotionally (for perhaps the first time in her life), and more than anything, allows others to take care of her.  And as Lily is nutured by this home and its inhabitants in ways only women (and mothers) can provide - she finds within herself a sense of maternal nurturing that she never knew she had.  Essentially, in the course of a relatively short period of time, Lily turns into a woman.  She develops a capacity to love herself and others that she never knew before.

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