The Secret Life of Bees Chapter 1 Notes
Setting: Summer of 1964 – Sylvan South Carolina
Female Protagonist & narrator: 14 year old Lily Owens
“People who think dying is the worst thing don’t know a thing about life” (2).
Lily faces a lot of challenges in her life.
· She is motherless and yearns for love and acceptance.
· Lives with T.Ray – her angry, neglectful, and sometimes abusive father.
· She is unpopular at school.
· She is living with the guilt of accidentally killing her own mother.
Lily’s first and only memory of her mother is from the day her mother died
(Lily was 4 years old).
Her memories are blurred but she remembers her mother and
T. Ray fighting and the explosion of the gun.
When Lily is in first grade, T. Ray tells her that she shot her mother by accident.
When Lily was 12, she found “…the last traces of her mother…” in a paper bag in the attic. Inside the bag was:
1. a photograph of her mother,
2. a pair of white cotton gloves,
3. a picture of a black Virgin Mary with a wooden frame that says Tiburon South Carolina on the back.
-She keeps these items hidden in a tin box in the woods near the orchard where she goes secretly to think about her mother.
-When T. Ray finds her there one night, he accuses her of sneaking out to be with a boy (far from accurate). He punishes her by making her kneel on grits.
Rosaleen: Lily’s “stand in mother”; a large African American woman with a bold personality. Rosaleen has no family or friends.
*Within the setting of the novel (the South in 1964) African Americans did not have equal rights and were often treated unfairly.
When Lily’s mother died, T. Ray brought Rosaleen from the peach orchards to take care of her (she was a peach picker)
Rosaleen is the only person who makes Lily feel loved; she takes care of Lily and defends her from T. Ray.
“…despite her sharp ways, her heart was more tender than a flower skin and she loved me beyond reason” (11).
-Lily’s 14th Birthday falls on the 4th of July; she hints to T. Ray that she wants a charm bracelet, but she realizes that he will never get her such a gift. The realization saddens her.
-Rosaleen is excited about the passing of The Civil Rights Act; the news program is broadcasting President Johnson signing the act on July 2, 1964.
Two days later (on Lily’s Birthday), Rosaleen and Lily go into town.
· Lily lies to T. Ray about the reason they are going, sayings she needs feminine products from the store.
· They are really going to town so Rosaleen can register to vote.
· As they are walking into Sylvan, they encounter a group of men who begin to ridicule Rosaleen and make derogatory and racist comments towards her.
· Rosaleen does not back down, but she probably should have. Instead she admits that her fan is stolen from the church, and she pours snuff juices all over the men’s shoes. Her actions are brazen and foolish.
· The group of men transforms into a mob and beat up Rosaleen.
· The police come and arrest Rosaleen for assault, theft, and disturbing the peace; they take both Lily and Rosaleen to jail.
The Secret Life of Bees Chapter 2 Notes
Setting: Sylvan jail
· The men from town beat Rosaleen up again in an empty.
parking lot behind the jail.
· They are demanding that Rosaleen apologizes to them, but she refuses.
· Inside the jail cell Lily realizes that Rosaleen’s face is hurt badly. Lily can’t understand why Rosaleen didn’t just apologize to the men.
-T. Ray comes to pick up Lily, but leaves Rosaleen behind at the jail.
“She dumped snuff juice on three white men! What the hell was she thinking?” (37)
Lily is very worried about Rosaleen back at the Jail and begs for T. Ray to go back and get her.
Setting: The Owens’ House
· When they get home, T. Ray threatens Lily and tells her that her punishment will be very severe.
· Something comes over her and she talks back to him. “You don’t scare me…”
· This enrages T. Ray, and he tells Lily that her mother could have cared less about her. Lily argues with him and refuses to believe his hurtful words.
“The truth is, your sorry mother ran off and left you. The day she died, she’d come back to get her things, that’s all. You can hate me all you want, but she’s the one who left you” (39)
· T. Ray leaves to go settle the pay roll for the pickers and Lily is alone in the house; she is devastated by T. Ray’s harsh words, which echo in her head as she cries.
· Suddenly, Lily has a moment of clarity:
“I knew exactly what I had to do- leave.
I had to get away from T. Ray, who was probably on his way back to do Lord-knows-what to me. Not to mention I had to get Rosaleen out of Jail” (41).
RUN AWAY:
· Lily packs a bag, takes the $38 she had earned selling peaches, and takes her map of South Carolina off of her wall. She also packs her mother’s few possessions and leaves the house after writing T. Ray a note telling him not to bother looking for her.
· When she arrives at the jail, she learns that Rosaleen is not there, but she’s in the hospital.
· Lily devises a plan to sneak Rosaleen out of the hospital. She calls the nurse’s station pretending to be the police man’s wife; she tells the nurse to tell the policeman who is guarding Rosaleen that he must return to the jail house.
· Her plan is successful. The policeman leaves his post and Lily and Rosaleen leave the hospital in a hurry.
· Lily shares her plan with Rosaleen- they are going to hitchhike to Tiburon South Carolina, the location scribbled on the back of the Black Mary picture that belonged to Lily’s mother. Neither of them know what they will do once they get there.
· Rosaleen is not thrilled about Lily’s plan, but she follows along.
· They are picked up by a man driving a pick up tuck; he takes them within three miles of Tiburon. Before he drives off, he gives them each a cantaloupe.
· They camp out in the woods near the river, and they plan to walk to Tiburon the following day.
· Rosaleen accuses Lily of treating her like a pet dog. Rosaleen questions Lily’s motives:
“I get it. You ran off cause of what your daddy said about your mother. It didn’t have nothing to do with me in jail” (53).
· They have a brief argument. Lily goes deeper into the woods and dozes off; she has a scary dream that the moon cracks and falls from the sky. When she wakes, she panics and begins looking for Rosaleen. Lily realizes that she and Rosaleen need each other, and they reconcile.
The Secret Life of Bees Chapter 3 Notes
Setting: Tiburon South Carolina – a small southern town much like Sylvan
· Lily and Rosaleen are still en route to Tiburon; they are hungry and beginning to get tired in their travels.
· When they get to town they stop at a general store to buy something to eat and some snuff for Rosaleen.
· The storekeeper mentions that he has never seen Lily before; she makes up a story, telling the storekeeper that she’s in town visiting her grandmother, Rose Campbell; she gets the name “Rose” from the tin of Rose’s Snuff (The storekeeper know everyone in the small town and questions Lily).
· Lily tries to buy some items from the store, but since it is Sunday, the storekeeper tells her she can only buy food; she steals the snuff for Rosaleen when the storekeeper is not looking. She feels guilty for stealing from the store, but she does it for a good cause.
“I was speculating how one day, years from now, I would send the store a dollar in an envelope to cover it, spelling out how guilt had dominated every moment of my life, when I found myself looking at a picture of the black Mary” (63).
· Lily notices a stack of honey jars with the picture of the Black Madonna on them; she asks the storekeeper where the honey is from. He explains that the honey is made by a woman by the name of August Boatwright.
· Lily is nervous and excited over her discovery in the store, which she shares with Rosaleen. Rosaleen tells her: “I don’t want you getting your hopes up…”
· Lily searches the newspaper for a story about a “…white girl breaking a negro out of jail in Sylvan”; she is relieved that there is no such story.
· Lily plans to find August Boatwright.
The Secret Life of Bees Chapter 4 Notes
Setting: Outside of the Boatwright’s house. The house is Pepto-Bismol pink surrounded by a picket fence, and there are many flowers and herbs growing around the porch.
· Lily and Rosaleen watch August from a across the street; August is tending to her bees. They wait for her to go inside before they approach the house.
· June Boatwright opens the door; she is not very welcoming. Lily asks if she is August. June assumes Rosaleen and Lily are there because they want honey. She tells them to come in and she gets her sister August.
· In the meantime, they meet May whose strange grin reveals that she is not quite normal.
Lily describes the inside of the house: which “… smelled like furniture wax everywhere…. [The parlor] was a big room with fringed throw rugs and an old piano with a lace runner, and cane bottom rockers draped with afghans. Each chair had its own little velvet stool sitting before it… imagine walls with nothing on them but mirrors” (69-70).
· Lily notices a unique and striking statue of a black Mary in the corner of the room. The statue gives Lily a strange feeling; she feels as though the statue knows her down to the core.
“Standing there I loved and hated myself. That’s what the black Mary did to me, made me feel glory and shame at the same time” (71).
· Lily lies to August telling her that she and Rosaleen are on their way to Virginia headed to Lily’s Aunts house; she explains that her mother is dead and that her father recently died in a tractor accident. She is afraid to tell the truth because she does not want August to reject her.
· Lily knows that August sees right through her, yet August agrees to let them stay with her temporarily; Lily and Rosaleen will stay in the honey house. Rosaleen will help out with the housework, while Lily will help August by working on the bee farm and in the honey house.
*June does not approve of the arrangement; June is characterized as serious and stern. She is quite rude to Lily and makes them feel uncomfortable from the moment they arrive. She plays the cello.
Lily explains that,
“T. Ray did not think colored women were smart…I thought they could be smart, but not as smart as me, me being white” (78).
Lily admits that she is surprised that August is so intelligent and cultured.
“That’s what let me know I had some prejudice buried inside me” (78)
*August is cultured and kind. She is the oldest of the three sisters, and it is clear that she is in charge. Lily wishes Rosaleen was as cultured as August.
*May is simpleminded and emotionally unstable. This is shown when Rosaleen asks why all the sisters are named after calendar months, and May explains that they used to have a sister named April, but she past away when she was little.
“Out of nowhere she started singing Oh! Susanna” like her life depended on it… She cried like April’s death happened only this second” (73)
· August shows Lily and Rosaleen to the honey house where they will be staying; it is in the backyard behind the pink house, which is surrounded by 28 acres of beautiful land left to August by her grandmother.
· Lily is at peace; she is happy and feels as though she belongs here.
The Secret Life of Bees Chapter 5 Notes
Setting: The Boatwright’s house
“The first week at August’s was a consolation, a pure relief” (82).
-Both Lily and Rosaleen are adjusting to life at the Boatwright’s house.
· Rosaleen is becoming very close with May, and Lily has been spending a lot of time with August tending the bees and making honey.
· Rosaleen figures out why May hums/sings “Oh! Susanna.” May sings/hums the song when she’s upset; it is her way of preventing herself from crying. May is “…a grown-up and a child at the dame time” (85).
· Lily has grown quite fond of May, and she admires her kindness, particularly how she saves spiders and other insects by catching them and setting them free instead of killing them; this reminds her of her mother.
Eavesdropping Lily overhears a conversation between June and August.
· She crouches, hidden in the bushes to hear what they say about her.
· June and August both know Lily is hiding something.
· June feels as though they should demand the truth, but August does not want to scare her off or send her back to where she comes from if she is in trouble. August tells June, “Let’s be patient” (87).