Quest for Identity and Self in Gayl Jones’s Corregidora

Abstract

This paper explores the quest for identity and self of the protagonist in the novel. It analyzes the text from the perspective of African-American Feminism. Corregidora is a neo-slave narrative written by Gayl Jones. Neo-slave narrative is a contemporary narrative that often deals with issues related to slavery. It depicts the violence of sex, rape, incest, and trauma. The protagonist of this novel, Ursa Corregidora is suffering from the identity crisis. Her longing for making identity and struggle to escape the burden of her past enforces her to search for her identity. Because her matrilineal line has a very haunting and troubled past of slavery. Her ancestors were brutally abused by the slave master. Ursa was victimized by her marital relationship. Sexual violence of her first husband Mutt makes her very sad, whereas her second husband Tadpole turns out to be a cheater. She falls from stairs and has a hysterectomy, which makes her sterile. She has lost her sexuality and her real self. However, she wants her life to be different from her matriarchal line. She decides to stay far from her familial story, which always hinders in her way. She chooses blues as her self-reflecting source but later on reunification with her first husband makes her complete self.