Within Jones' Corregidora, we follow Ursa Corregidora's story in the present, but her beliefs and fears are very much rooted in the past. The oral tradition is extremely prevalent in the novel and Ursa claims that she has learned many of these stories while propped on the lap of her grandmother. What we learn of the past is introduced in italics and the sequences often seem dreamlike. How is Corregidora connected to her female relatives and what is the significance of her not being able to bear children? Tadpole speaks of the fact that there are always consequences for our actions, but Ursa's seem more concrete in that the physical ability to bear children has been taken away from her. Tadpole suggests that Mutt's consequences are the result of loving Corregidora. What effects do you think Ursa's fall have on her husband?
When Tadpole asks Ursa what she wants, Ursa replies: "What all of us Corregidora women want. Have been taught to want. To make generations" (22). What do we make of this statement? Particularly, Corregidora's use of the word "taught" seems to be important here because it implies that the desire to "make generations" is a learned response from her female relatives. We spoke of the biological imperative in terms of Incidents in the Life of a Slavegirl, claiming that female slaves are robbed of their female identities because they are not automatically made "mothers" even when they give birth to children. Stripping women of this identity is one more way of degrading slaves and removing them from the category of being human. In the slave trade, they are considered objects rather than people, which makes it easier for slave owners to participate in a human trade. In what ways are Corregidora and Linda similar? Both have been robbed of the identity of motherhood, but Ursa's occurs through actual physical violence, whereas Linda's seems to be more abstract. She has the ability to produce children, but she is not allowed to be a mother to them.
The fact that Ursa can no longer have children seems to distance her from her female relatives and the flashbacks seem to support this idea. This loss, although a physical one for Corregidora, has implications not only for herself, but for her family line. If Corregidora's "one" purpose in life has been brutally taken away from her, what is she expected to contribute to her family? her sex?
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What is she expected to contribute to her family line?
ReplyDeleteThe answer to this question is not clear to me.
Yet I can only begin to understand the mind of an infertile Corregidora. Having lost the ability to "bear witness", Ursa is the last of the bloodline testimony that cannot be done away with like burnt documents.
Maybe her family, specifically her mother, doesn't expect her to contribute anything else?
"I was thinking that now that Mama had gotten it all out, her own memory--at least to me anyway--maybe she and some man..."
"What all of us Corregidora women want. Have been taught to want. To make generations" (22).
ReplyDeleteTo make generations is a form of empowerment, which I believe is why it is the only thing that Ursa and the Corregidora women want. To procreate would be steps further from the act of sex, which Ursa's grandmother and mother were forced to do. It is also connected to the oral history, which is so important in this text. The women need future generations to tell about their past and they need them to continue telling. Ursa's ongoing recollection of her grandmother's stories and her search for her mother's story symbolizes Ursa's high regard for the ability to testify. She knows it is powerful and learned at an early age that she can activate this power by merely telling and I believe she does this through song. I may be taking a huge leap here but perhaps Ursa's inability to produce children will disrupt the blood line because it will stop with her, but her story and her ancestor's stories will continue because she still tells them, albeit to Mutt, Tadpole, and anyone else with whom she forms a connection.
I made the same leap, Darise, that Ursa has in fact passed on the story, has borne witness by telling it to the men.
ReplyDeleteThis is the interesting part to me...that it is all men to whom the narrative is being passed.
Ursa also passes it on in the same way of her forebearers:compulsively. It seems to come over her like one possessed and she goes into her own trance-like state much like her mother et al.