In The Secret Life of Bees, the character Sue Monk Kidd creates in Lily is quite complex. Despite some of the tragedies in her life, Lily embodies a typical adolescent girl. She is dealing with a variety of insecurities in her life and at the same time is trying to find her identity and place in the world.

Dealing with insecurities is a fundamental problem that is faced by all adolescent girls. Sue Monk Kidd creates many instances in the novel that display Lily’s insecurities. One attribute that Lily is insecure about is her belief that she lacks femininity. Due to this insecurity, Lily does not have any confidence in attempting to make friends at school. She mentions her lack of friends when speaking about her father, stating, “He didn’t believe in slumber parties or sock hops, which wasn’t a big concern because I never got invited to them anyway.” Lily’s lack of a feminine nature clearly creates problems for her, as shown by her non-existent social life. Like most teens, Lily has insecurities that that get in the way of her daily life. Sue Monk Kidd displays this fundamental human quality to make Lily appear to be a recognizable human being.

Another fundamental human attribute that that Sue Monk Kidd displays in Lily is her wanting to search for an identity and a place in the world. Due to the many tragedies in her life, Lily feels as though she has an undefined identity and lacks a true home. When Lily is living at T-Ray’s house, she does not feel that she is in the right place. T-Ray and his oppressive ways prohibit Lily from blossoming into gifted woman she will later become. T-Ray shoots down Lily’s aspiration to become a writer and English teacher by not letting her even consider attending college. Lily explains that T-Ray thought college was “a waste of money for girls, even if they did, like me, score the highest number a human being can get on the verbal aptitude test.” Clearly, T-Ray’s house is not a suitable place for Lily to find her identity and she must therefore search for a new home in order to find her place in the world. Throughout the rest of the novel, Lily searches to find herself at the communal society of August Boatwright. Lily finally comes to the realization that the Boatwright house and honey factory is the ideal location for her to find her identity and place in the world. When T-Ray arrives to take her from the motherly Boatwrights, Lily remarks bluntly, “I’m staying here. I’m not leaving,” showing that she has found the proper place to blossom into her true self. Although Lily’s search for her true identity is never fully fulfilled, she finds a home to continue this search. In writing about Lily’s search for an identity, Sue Monk Kidd shows a fundamental human quality in Lily that makes her seem like a recognizable teenage girl. Like all teenage girls, Lily hunts for an identity, making her a character that they can directly relate to.

Lily embodies a typical teenage girl in her problems with insecurities and her search for a true identity. By writing about these qualities, Sue Monk Kidd created a character that appears to have fundamental characteristics of a real-life human being. The Secret Life of Bees is a powerful and useful novel partly due to the fact that Lily is a recognizable human character who adolescent girls can find some of themselves in. Through Su Monk Kidd’s careful humanization of Lily, she becomes an inspiration and role model for young women. (605)