I can remember having a discussion about the bee motif of Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Secret Life of Bees, with my mother years ago after watching the movie. My mother had read the book, I had not; we had both just finished the film for the first time. My mother was disappointed, I wasn’t. She was primarily disappointed in how the film incorporated the element of the bees, stating something to the effect that the bees were an intricate telling of the story in Kidd’s novel, but appeared as more of an afterthought in the film. Not having read the novel, I could not comment.
While not finished with the novel, I feel I can now comment:
It is obvious, from the opening lines, what Kidd is attempting to do with the bees: Provide a symbolic reinterpretation of Lily Owen’s life via a fact-like presentations of bees, that becomes a very thin veil for her actual discussion: the importance of matriarchy. Consider the opening:
The queen, for her part, is the unifying force of the community; if she is removed from her hive, the workers very quickly sense her absence. After a few hours, or even less, they show unmistakable signs of queenlessness.
-Man and Insects
~ The Secret Life of Bees, ch. 1
Chapter one, with the guided map of bees, demonstrates Lily’s own sense of “queenlessness.” Within this chapter Kidd presents why Lily is queenless, and how the primary female character in her life, Rosaleen the black maid, cannot fill a sense of queendom for Lily. Furthermore, the quote implies that Lily, like the bee community, will attempt to find a queen.
I can easily see why my mother preferred this to the film, where the study of bees is a minor backdrop to the overall story. However, I am finding the discussion at the beginning of each chapter to be rather heavy handed. However, I have to question if this is heavy handed because of my literary background and education, or if it is just heavy handed. I suppose it’s a bit of both, but I am finding that it’s a bit of a turn-off to me, in that I don’t care for the mapping of chapters before I read them. And yet, I am distinctly aware of the need to incorporate the bees.
Bees, as Kidd continually draws, are a matriarchal society. At the beginning of chapter four, the chapter that Lily and Rosaleen find the Boatwright home and are given refuge, informs readers to the female-centric aspect of bee colonies. The opening of the chapter quotes from Bees of the World, and discusses the gendered grouping and mating aspects of bees:
Each colony is a family unit, comprising a single, egg-laying female or queen and her many sterile daughters called workers. […] Males are reared only at the times of year when their presence is required.
~The Secret Life of Bees, ch. 4
In blatant alignment to the bees, Lily has stumbled upon a strictly matriarchal home. This is not to say there are no men, only that men are only present in moments when their presence is required. And the men that are present are so in a fleeting nature that is determined by the Boatwright women.
Moreover, Kidd makes the connection within her story almost flawlessly, making the chapter introductions seem novice and overkill. Consider one of the times August takes Lily out to the beehives after the major honey push. As the bees begin to swarm them, Lily feels unusually close to the bees who have surrounded her. In an out of body experience she feels as if she is one with the bees, swirling and moving with them. But just as quickly she is reminded of her past, her outsider position amongst the bees, and the Boatwrights:
[…] I felt the hallow, spooned-out space between my navel and breastbone begin to ache. The motherless place. […] But here, non, surrounded by stinging bees on all sides and the motherless place throbbing away […] It felt like the queen’s attendants were out here in a frenzy of love, caressing me in a thousand places. Look who’s here, it’s Lily. She is so weary and lost. Come on, bee sisters. I was the stamen in the middle of a twirling flower. The center of all their comforting.
~The Secret Life of Bees, p. 150-1
Even without the heavy handed chapter introduction, in this case explaining how a bee without her sisters will soon die, the importance of Lily finding and connecting to other women through the symbolism of the bees is apparent. I would even go as far to say well constructed. Lily has discovered during her time at the Boatwrights’ house the importance of sisterhood. Or more directly, the distinct and all encompassing role women have within their own community that cannot be duplicated outside of the realm of woman.
I like this notion. It’s one of the primarily reasons I chose Kidd’s novel as my first. What is it like to have women in charge? Does it change the feel of the novel? Of the themes presented? I think it works well — not the bees, but the demonstration of the matriarchy. Lily, who knows nothing of bees — or women, since the bees are representative of women — must learn, alongside readers, what matriarchy means. However, I wish it could have been done without the cover of bees.
To start, I cried. A lot.
I opened my mouth. I wanted something. Something, I didn’t know what. Mother, forgive. That’s all I could feel. That old longing spread under me like a great lap, holding me tight.
TheFemmeProtag 