52 pages • 1-hour read
Honey
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of parent death and childhood grief.
The Problem of Family Secrets
The novel’s main conflict revolves around two family mysteries that Melody seeks to solve: Who is her father calling “honey,” and what was her mother like? Melody’s pursuit of answers explores the problem of family secrets.
The first secret appears when Melody and her father encounter one of Melody’s mother’s old friends in the grocery store. Melody has no idea who the woman hugging her is because she has no connection to her mother or her mother’s friends. This is because “[a]s far as Melody could tell, her father never felt it was the right time or place to talk about her mother” (11). When Melody once asked her father about her mother’s death, “It was the first time she’d ever seen him cry, and she’d never brought up the subject again” (11). The sensitive nature of the topic creates a boundary between Melody and her father that Melody is unwilling to cross, making details about Melody’s mother a family secret that Melody must uncover for herself.
The other mystery arises when Melody overhears her father refer to someone on the phone as “honey.” After weeks of her father being more absent-minded than normal and whistling “You Are My Sunshine,” Melody finally guesses why he’s acting so strangely. Melody believes she’s found the answer when she catches her teacher Miss Hogan whistling “You Are My Sunshine” and overhears Miss Hogan tell Bee-Bee that she’s getting married soon, and that, “We haven’t even told our families” (69). Certain that she’s solved the mystery of who “honey” is, Melody confronts Miss Hogan inside the Bee Hive salon. Melody’s decision to enter the salon unintentionally leads her into answers to the other mystery of what her mother was like: When Bee-Bee realizes that Melody doesn’t know much about her own mother, she tells Melody about her mother’s childhood, career, death, and funeral.
The revelation of who “honey” really is comes in Chapter 20, when Melody confronts her father about keeping secrets. Melody’s father reveals that he’s seeing Mrs. McKenna, not Miss Hogan, giving Melody positive and satisfying closure to the “honey” mystery. When Melody and her father finally talk about Melody’s mother, Melody’s father understands that it doesn’t help Melody to keep secrets from her and promises, “No more secrets” (129). The final family secret to emerge is the existence of Mo, who was supposed to grow up alongside Melody but went to live with Bee-Bee when Melody’s mother died. The story ends with Mo returning to his original home, no longer a family secret but a family member.
The ways secrets are kept from Melody cause her distress, with the novel ultimately implying that family secrets can do more harm than good. Instead, open communication and trust rescue Melody’s relationship with her father.
Using Memories to Cope with Grief
Through Melody’s journey to learn about and mourn her late mother, the novel explores a strong connection between grief and memories, developing the idea that memories are a key factor in one’s ability to grieve a person.
At the beginning of the novel, Melody doesn’t know much about her mother, and she doesn’t have strong feelings about her mother being absent, either. She feels, “The fact that she didn’t have a mother was simply that: a fact” (4). Since her father finds it too sad to discuss, Melody has little knowledge about who her mother was beyond the most basic details. It is Bee-Bee who provides Melody with insight into her mother by sharing her own memories, detailing Melody’s mother’s childhood filled with music and jokes, and her ascent to fame. When Melody asks about her mother’s death, she feels that “[d]eep down inside her something was stirring, a feeling she couldn’t quite find the right words to describe” (91), and after hearing the details of her mother’s funeral, “Melody felt tears prickle up in her eyes and the mysterious feeling got stronger” (92). Although Melody doesn’t have the words to describe her emotions, she begins to feel grief about her mother’s death for the first time thanks to Bee-Bee’s vivid memories.
After the visit, Melody seeks comfort in the music room, a room “she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d gone in” (103), filled with mementos of her mother. The following morning, she finds and listens to the cassette tape featuring her mother’s Brahms performance. Although Melody has never listened to classical music, “she could have sworn she’d heard the piece before—so many times, in fact, she knew every note by heart” (107). At the end of the tape, Melody’s mother says, “I think our baby likes Brahms. She’s kicking like a little kangaroo” (108), indicating that Melody’s mother is pregnant with Melody at the time of the recording. Although Melody doesn’t remember things from before she was born, the familiarity of the music and the sound of her mom’s voice stirs feelings within Melody that only grow stronger as she listens to the tape two more times.
When Mrs. McKenna finds Melody in the car shortly after and asks what’s wrong, Melody’s “mysterious feeling that had been hiding deep down inside her finally rose up to the surface, bubbling and boiling until she couldn’t hold it back any longer and it spilled out over the edges of her heart” (109). Melody finally finds the words to express, “I miss my mother” (109), a feeling Melody has never experienced before learning who her mother was. The link between Melody’s newfound knowledge of her mother and her fresh feelings of grief develops the idea that memories are key for grieving loved ones.
In the end, Melody talks to her father about needing to know her mother, and her father agrees to engage with memories of Melody’s mother for Melody’s sake, fetching the items from the attic so Melody can get a deeper glimpse into who her mother was. The novel thus suggests that memories should be embraced, not repressed, in order to cope with grief.
The Dangers of Small-Town Gossip
The idea that small-town gossip can be more harmful than helpful is developed primarily through Melody’s investigation into the titular “honey” character and the misleading leads she follows in the process. Throughout Melody’s quest, the novel exposes the dangers of small-town gossip.
When Teeny begins to repeat gossip she’s heard at the Bee Hive to Melody, the personal nature of what Teeny reveals is evident. Teeny talks about several people’s health issues and mentions one family has a new pregnancy. When Teeny repeats that “Wrigley’s is having a sale on Miracle Whip and it looks like Henry’s been bitten by the love bug” (30), Melody, who is already suspicious that her father is hiding someone he calls “honey,” is convinced that this statement is about her father, who is the only Henry in town. Melody’s first visit to the Bee Hive is thus entirely motivated by this secondhand gossip. She also becomes significantly stressed and confused by the gossip, which suggests that gossip can be harmful to one’s mental health.
Melody later finds out that the Henry from Teeny’s gossip was not her father after all: “It turned out there was another Henry in Royal, after all: a large orange cat—the same one that had been hanging around the Bee Hive lately. It was this Henry who had been bitten by the love bug” (135). The revelation that Teeny’s gossip was never about Melody’s father develops the idea that gossip can lead to misunderstandings. Melody’s trip to the Bee Hive, though productive in many ways, was ultimately based on a false lead due to misinterpreted community gossip.
Bee-Bee is also aware of the dangers of small-town gossip as the owner of a beauty salon, “where people tend to unburden themselves and bare their souls” (34). Bee-Bee, aware that her position makes her privy to many people’s personal information, “never gossiped herself” (35). Bee-Bee understands that “Secrets in a small town are about as easy to keep as a snowball on a radiator, but when it came to Bee-Bee Churchill, even the juiciest of secrets was safe with her” (35). Bee-Bee proves her dedication to keeping secrets when she reveals that she would’ve never told Melody about Mo without Melody’s father’s blessing.
Bee-Bee’s quiet secrecy in contrast to her salon becoming a hub of town gossip emphasizes the importance of abstaining from gossip to maintain people’s privacy. Through Bee-Bee’s secrecy and Teeny’s loose lips, the novel suggests that gossip can be harmful and distressing for others.
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