40 pages • 1 hour read
Sue Monk KiddThe Secret Life of Bees
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 11-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary
After May’s burial, August and June retreat into their own private mourning spaces and are inaccessible to Lily. Zach wants to talk of nothing but the race riots in New Jersey, and Lily believes she can detect a change in him since he’s gotten out of jail. A few days later, when Rosaleen makes a special dinner for the four of them, August again asks June if she’s going to marry Neil, and June still won’t give an answer. August puts May’s suicide note into a crevice in the Our Lady of Chains statue and signifies that the mourning process is over.
Lily wakes up the next morning to prepare for Mary Day, a two-day celebration on the Feast of Assumption. While the women are working in the kitchen to prepare for Mary Day, Neil comes into the house and asks June to marry him, and she finally says yes. The Daughters of Mary arrive, and the celebration begins. Lily participates in the rituals of Mary Day, including the ceremony of covering the statue in chains for the night. The statue is wheeled out to the honey house, and Lily disappears with Zach, where they have their first kiss down by the river. Zach tells Lily that while they can’t be together now, he will come back for her someday.
Chapter 12 Summary
Lily and Zach help the Daughters clean up the yard, and while some of them are still cleaning in the kitchen, Lily goes upstairs to wait for August in her bedroom. Lily tells August the entire story of how she came to be in Tiburon with the sisters—from her fight with T. Ray to killing her mother to her and Rosaleen’s arrest—and to Lily’s surprise, August knew exactly who she was from the first time she saw her. Lily tells August she wants to know everything about her mother, and since this story is both overwhelming and at times incredibly disappointing to Lily, they take breaks during it. August tries to get Lily to see that her mother’s abandonment of her had nothing to do with Lily and everything to do with her mother’s own sadness and depression. August then tells Lily that the day her mother died she was coming back for Lily, planning on taking Lily back to the pink house to be with August, May, and June. Lily learns that her mother fell out of love with T. Ray and didn’t want to marry him anymore before she found out she was pregnant with Lily. Lily feels responsible for her mother’s unhappiness and how her mother’s pregnancy with her caused her to marry a man she didn’t want to be with. August puts Lily to bed and tries to console her by saying that nothing is perfect. The dream Lily had of her mother could only exist as long as Lily was willing to avoid the truth.
Chapters 11-12 Analysis
Mary Day is an example of stories that can and need to be kept alive, even the parts that one might not want to remember. Lily is disturbed by the reenactment of placing chains on the Mary statue, but August consoles her and says that “remembering is everything” (228).
June says yes to Neil, finally, in the spirit of May’s letter. While both Lily and Zach know that a romantic relationship is not possible for them right now, Lily lets Zach promise her “someday,” and Lily is open to this. This moment is an example of Lily opening herself to life just like June has.
Lily confesses all of her secrets to August, finally, on the first night of Mary Day. In this confessional moment, August becomes a kind of divine mother figure who is able to absolve Lily of a small part of her grief and sorrow by inviting Lily to consider her own mother as simply human. August complicates Lily’s narrative of both her mother and her father in this conversation. While Lily no longer holds the burden of her lies, she now carries the burden of the truth: “I’d traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn’t know which one was heavier” (255).
Related Titles
By Sue Monk Kidd
