In the novel The Secret life of Bees there are many different themes in the novel but my two favorite ones are female power and race-based prejudice. In female power you see Rosaleen being lily mother even though she is not her mother but she does it because she loves lily and August giving her knowledge and helping her be strong so that she can be good in the world. Then another female power is lily asking for her mother forgiveness for killing her and remembering her mother. The other theme in the novel would be Race-based prejudice.
On how Lily was growing up in the south where races were divided by the laws and how other people would have their attitude on different race. In the novel The Secret life of Bees i feel that Rosaleen has the strongest female power in the whole novel. She is like a mother to Lily and Lily loves her like her mother. Even though she lack of manners sometimes but she is the one who cleans up when she got hurt by throwing the honey jars against the wall of the honey house. She is also the one who cooks for her and cleans the house just like a mother.
In this quote it shows how she does act like a mother,” She lived alone in a little house tucked back in the woods, not far from us, and came every day to cook, clean, and be my stand-in mother. Rosaleen had a child herself, so far the last ten years I’d been her pet guinea pig (pg 2). ” That to me shows female power, how one women who use to live by herself is now being like a mother to Lily. Another example of Female power is August. She is not like Rosaleen who cooks for her and cleans up for her but she is like a mother to lily. August is Lily’s second surrogate mother, and she gives lily knowledge.
She intuitively recognizes what lily needs and acknowledges immediately whose daughter lily is. She waits for her until she comes to tell August a story about her mother, and she holds lily while she lets out all her rage. August give lily the fearlessness to listen to herself and that a women could be strong and who does good in the world. Then is this quote it says,” There is nothing perfect,” August said from the doorway. “There is only life (pg 256). ” To me that quote is very strong and it would help Lily forget about her mother.
To me i feel that August teacher’s lily about life and that is why she has female power. Lily wants her mother forgiveness for killing her, and she still wishes that her mother was still with her to give her wisdom. Lily thinks about spending time with her, playing with and how she would treated Lily if she was still alive. She lays down awake thinking about her mother forgiving her and hoping that she would still love her even though she killed her. She thinks about her mother and her being together in “paradise” one day just having some fun and enjoying life.
That night I lay in bed and thought about dying and going to be with my mother in paradise. I would meet her saying,’ Mother, forgive, please forgive,’ and she would kiss my skin till it grew chapped and tell me i was not to blame. She would tell me this for the first ten thousand years (page 3 ). ” Then Lily’s last and only memory of her mother was when she died and she remembers every detail of it even the smell of her perfume. “My first and only memory of my mother was the day she died… The day she died was December 3, 1954…
Her hair was black and generous, with thick curls circling her face, a face i could never quite coax into view, despite the sharpness of everything else. I raised my arms to her, and she picked me up, saying i was way too big a girl to hold like this, but holding me anyway. The moment she lifted me, i was wrapped in her smell… The afternoon my mother died, there was a suitcase open on the floor, sitting near the stuck window. She moved in and out of the closet, dropping this and that into the suitcase, not bothering to fold them…
The closet floor vibrated whenever someone climbed the stairs below it, which is how i knew T. Ray was coming. Over my head i heard my mother, pulling things from the hangers, the swish of clothes, wire clinking together, Hurry she said. When his shoes clomped into the room, she sighed, the breath leaving her as if her lungs had suddenly clenched. This is the last thing i remember with perfect crispness- her breath floating down to me like a tiny parachute, collapsing without a trace among the piles of shoes.
I don’t remember what they said, only the fury of their words, how the air turned raw and full of welts. (page 5-7),” Lily’s memory of her mother is one that she would never forget and would always keep it close to her. This show how important mothers are, we never forget meaningless memories because they are really important to us as they bring back good or even bad memories about our mothers. In the novel The secret life of bees there isn’t many prejudice in the novel but there is couple of it. “I didn’t know whether to be excited for her or worried.
All people ever talked about after church were the Negroes and whether they’d get their civil rights. Who was winning—the white people’s team or the colored people’s team? Like it was a do-or-die contest. When that minister from Alabama, Reverend Martin Luther King, got arrested last month in Florida for wanting to eat in a restaurant, the men at church acted like the white people’s team had won the pennant race. I knew they would not take this news lying down, not in one million years (page 21 ). ” Lily is talking about the Civil Rights Act, which she and Rosaleen were watching live on their T. V. Then Lily wasn’t as excited like Rosaleen because Lily isn’t really politically active.
Rosaleen was so excited that when she was watching the T. V she sat there shaking her head and saying, “lord have mercy,” just looking so happy about the Civil Rights Act being signed. Then after it was signed many people were not happy about given African Americans the right to vote. “An uneasy feeling settled in my stomach. Last night the television had said a man in Mississippi was killed for registering to vote, and I myself had overheard Mr. Bussey, one of the deacons, say to T. Ray, ‘Don’t you worry, they’re gonna make ’em write their names in perfect cursive and refuse them a card if they forget so much as to dot anl or make a loop in their y. ”
Some people would even kill an African American if they registered to vote. They even made some plans to deny African Americans of their rights of an citizen of the United States. That to me showed many racism back then like just let them vote why do you care so much about not letting them vote they are citizens of the United States they should be able to vote without getting himself killed.
