Sue Monk Kidd's Novel the Thesis

She has a vivid imagination doubled by a deep understanding of the human nature and thus her stories are acting like parables. The story telling is similar to some point to that of Boccacio's Decameron. People will find a something in common with their own experiences and learn something out of them without feeling punished or admonished or even pointed at. One of the lessons Kidd is teaching here through Lily's adventures is that of racism, viewed both from the white and black perspectives.

Spirituality is omnipresent in the book, from the way Lily thinks of her mother as her guardian angel to the new religion she discovers in the Boatwright household, half Christian half self-made. The two worlds she lives in are separated by the same trace and that is where the master work of Kidd is revealed. A simple phrase is revealing more than an extended study on the link between what people do and hat people are. In the first Chapter, Lilly tells about her prays regarding her father: "I had asked God repeatedly to do something about T. Ray. He'd gone to church for forty years and was only getting worse. It seemed like this should tell God something"(Kidd, p.4)

Another sign of the master hand of the author resides in the vividness of her characters. Rosaleen is an ageless woman who worked on a peach farm for most of her life and then came into T.Ray's household to replace his daughter's dead mother. Yet, she will go to vote, despite her very life being endangered, just like thousands of black people who fought for their civil rights did in the sixties.August Boatwright is a woman who successfully runs a business with a household full of women, in a world ruled by the white men. Her name shows author's deliberate choice in not reflecting any indicator of skin color or gender. She seems ageless, genderless and thus impossible to enroll in any type. She is the voice of reason just as she is the expression of wisdom and love. Like the Madonna who is black, contrary to the classical depiction, August Boatwright gathers all the qualities of the superior being. The bees are another character in the novel that inspire and help the people who will finally know their secrets. There is always something sacred about the bees and the author used that to add a special note to the spirituality of the book. The whole story of a young girl who will eventually come to terms with herself after having learned through the Boatwright sisters about the simple things of life is destined to answer at least one question a reader has asked him or herself. A masterwork of literature will always be a turning point in someone's life and the Secret Life of Bees helps one come to terms with his or her own past or at least better understand the recent past of mankind.

Works Cited:

Kidd, Sue Monk. The Secret Life of Bees. Penguin, 2002.....