A prominent aspect of the Secret Life of Bees was its incorporation of color psychology. Before her time at the with the Boatwright sisters, Lily is confused about her feelings towards blacks as well as her feelings towards her own femininity. I believe that the “Pepto-Bismol” color of the Boatwright sisters’ house aided Lily in her transformation.
According to Color Matters, pink has a tranquilizing and calming effect on a human being. “Even if a person tries to be angry or aggressive in the presence of pink, he [or she] can’t,” making pink a common choice for the color of prison cells. Pink is fusion of white, representing purity and innocence, and red, representing emotional intensity and often love. The combination of these two colors creates pink, which, beyond being tranquilizing, is also associated with femininity. Noting its two parent colors, I think Kidd’s use of pink as the color of the sisters’ house connotes that the women inside it are not only natural and pure in their womanhood, but also strong and passionate.
At the beginning of the novel, Lily expresses feelings so intense that she feels the need to express them through self-harm—“picking scabs off [her] body and, when [she] didn’t have any, gnawing the flesh around my fingernails till [she] was a bleeding wreck.”[1] I think her frustrations subconsciously led to her wanting to see the color of her red own blood, expressing her emotional intensity unhealthfully through the act of hurting herself. Lacking the guidance of her mother and feeling the strong influence of her abusive father, Lily feels lost and unfeminine. As she says in the beginning of the novel, “[She] felt half the time [she] was impersonating a girl instead of really being one.” Lily especially feels sad that she has no one to share the pride of her new “rose-petal” stain with (signifying her official womanhood)—only reinforcing that she feels that her femininity is stifled.
When Lily begins to live with the Boatwright sisters, she not only learns how to express emotions in a healthy way, but also she begins to appreciate her own femininity. Through these two changes, Lily is able to leave her feelings of racism behind her. Beyond the direct interactions with the uncanny Boatwright sisters themselves, I think Lily’s living in the Boatwright sisters’ unconventional pink house aided her in her transition. As previously mentioned, pink is a tranquilizing color. Lily already had red in her life—strong emotions and the indicator of womanhood, her ‘monthly visits.’ What Lily lacked was some of the associations with the color white: the purity and innocence that are often associated with youth. I interpret the loud presence of “Caribbean Pink” to help flush out the strength of the emotional intensity (red) in Lily’s life. I think the pink house, full of colorful women, helps Lily to accept her femininity by association. Through loving the uncanny sisters, Lily also learns to love Zach, a big step in admitting her own femininity and overcoming her racism.
Erica, I suspect you're right about the use of colors in the novel, and my guess is that the "Baker Miller" shade of pink of only one of several. As you suggest in your opening, color, as in race, is of course a major theme of the story as well. But I agree that the story is also about Lily coming into her own as a woman, a task made more difficult by her own lack of a mother. Thoughtfully done.
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